


The Ghost of Us

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Numbers [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - World War II, Angst, Antisemitism, Blood and Violence, Dark fic, Death, Dehumanization, Gore, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, PTSD, Psychological Horror, Seriously it's not gonna be nice, Slurs, and i might end up deleting it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-14 20:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20606717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: The briefcase transports Klaus into a time to fall in love with a bookshop owner and photography enthusiast with soft amber eyes and a yellow star sewn into all of his clothes. And later, Klaus will stand next to that same man behind a fence, and he'll hold his hands up to a camera and pray to a merciless god that his siblings open a history book and find him.Or, the briefcase sends Klaus into the 1940s Berlin instead of Vietnam, and into another kind of Hell.





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I understand the gravity of the subject matter in this fic and I do not at all mean to insult, hurt or offend anyone or come off as insensitive. I want to approach this as sensitively as I can and, having visiting Auschwitz multiple times in my life and having met survivors, I want to be as respectful as I can. This being said, I can't guarantee this fic will stay up and that I won't delete it or heavily edit it, etcetera. If you have any concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out.

His feet pound the ground, silence and care long forgotten, and his nails dig crescent moons into the back of Dave's hand that's curled around his own. Dave trips over a tree root. Klaus violently yanks him back upright with whatever strength he can miraculously muster, and they both ignore his limp, for they can't afford to acknowledge it now. His other hand remains outstretched in front of him, feeling for branches and twigs and trees, for he can hardly see in the dark of night. Light snow burns the bare soles of his feet, freezing cold, and they keep running. Gunshots echo in the distance from where they ran from, and somewhere to their right and to their left, more people run wildly.

Klaus has never ran so fast, so desperately, in his entire life. He's never had to run as if his life truly depended on it. 

He falls, and Dave hauls him upright, arms under his arm pits, and continues to haul him across the ground until he finds his own feet beneath him again and they pick up the speed even more. A gunshot echoes. Someone wails, high pitched and full of horror, and then another gunshot echoes and the woods fall silent. 

Further, further, further they run. Klaus isn't exactly sure where the holes dug in the ground are, but they have to be further. Recently dug out by people in an attempt to help them, and they need to find them and pray that it works. Klaus knows what will happen if they can't find the holes, or the holes have been clogged up by mud and snow, or if the soldiers have found them. He knows because he's seen it happen to everyone else, and to the people who just so happened to have some unfortunate connection to the prisoners who had tried to escape or resist, and to anyone who they simply felt like killing. 

The snow grows deeper in some parts, crawling up their legs, so cold it burns hot, and they ignore it all. Ignore the pain that's become a constant companion for them, the black dots dancing around in his vision and the fact this his legs beg to just give out. He can't. Not now. If he stops, he'll die. If he stops, Dave will die, too, because he'll try and drag or carry Klaus after him, subsequently slowing him down, and they'll both get caught, no matter how much Klaus will punch and shove him away. So he keeps going. Dave knows the way better because he was the one who heard of this, and so when he tugs him left or right, forwards, between trees, he trusts him.

His breath comes in short, sharp pants, like a dog, wheezing out of his dry throat and his aching lungs. He stumbles left with Dave, batting away a tree branch before it has the chance to hit him in the face. They keep running. They've long since kicked off the torture chambers imposing as shoes, and Klaus isn't sure if he'd rather those at the moment or if he'd rather continue dealing with the cold on his battered feet. 

Dave slows down. He doesn't keep sprinting as such, but he darts to and fro with Klaus in tow, scanning the floor. Then he stops, looks at Klaus, and nods. Then he disappears into a tiny hole deep in the ground. Klaus follows after him, sliding inside.

It's tiny, and all but full of mud and snow and water. It reaches above their knees, freezing and heavy, and the hole's so small that Klaus has to stand on Dave's feet, and had they had any more weight on them Klaus thought that they would get stuck in the hole. It's deep, taller than them, and dirt trickles down his back and shoulders, and he hears gunshots get closer, too close. He shoves one of his hands between his lips, biting down to muffle his breaths and the wheezing in his throat as tears trickle down his cheeks. Dave's chest heaves against his, and above the sound of his own blood roaring in his ears, Klaus hears a pop and boots crunching snow. They fall as silent as they can, and Klaus knows this is it. They're going to be found and they're going to die. If they're lucky, they'll just get shot and left to rot in the hole they're in, but the soldiers so loved to make an example and he knew that they would most likely be marched right back into camp and hung or shot. 

Klaus puts his head in the crook of Dave's neck, and Dave arms wrap like pythons around his torso, and Klaus splays his other hand across his shoulder, digging his nails in. The footsteps walk slowly, evenly across the ground, closer and further as the soldier prowls around, searching for them. Klaus has never been religious, but in that moment he repeats the prayer Dave taught him a lifetime ago on that train. 

His shoulders shake. He can't stop himself. Dave's body shakes beneath him, too, all hard edges and sharp bones, and Klaus can feel the way their ribs knock uncomfortably with each heaving, stuttering breath. He wonders, now, if trying to run was the right idea. They would die eventually, and escaping offered only a slim chance of a life for them, and killed anyone associated with them back in the camp. But at least they might have gotten another week, another day than they would have now. 

Then again, Klaus isn't sure he can really call the past few months truly _living._

"I love you," he says, a whisper torn from his chapped lips, and he says it so quietly he isn't sure if he actually says it aloud. But Dave hears him, for he tightens his hold on Klaus and swallows heavily. "I love you," Klaus repeats.

"I love you too," says Dave, and Klaus bites his hand to quiet the sob that comes from him. 

"I love you. I love you. I love you." He mutters it until it's incoherent and maybe not actually said out loud, but he needs Dave to know, and he needs to say it if he's going to die. 

The footsteps come closer, snow crunching, mud squelching when the person goes onto their knees surely less than five feet from them. Dave's hands shake and hold him so tightly he knows his corpse will have bruises. 

"Klaus?" Whispers a voice, and Klaus recognises it. He forces his eyes open and looks up and there, through the dark sky and naked tree branches, is Five's face. He feels like it's been a lifetime since he saw him. He sobs loudly, then, enough so that Dave stiffens in terror at the clear sound, and Klaus reaches up a shaking hand to his brother and says, 

_"Save us."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic isn't going to be nice, just straight up. Heed the tags, the history behind it all, because it'll be graphic and as realistic as I can have it, with research and study and my own experience in visiting Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau. I want to explore the idea but approach the subject sensitively. And I might just end up deleting this depending on how it goes and how this part is received to be honest, so I would appreciate feedback on this <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to address some things for the plot that differ from reality slightly; Klaus, most likely, would not be sent to Auschwitz, should he be distinguished as a gay man. As far as we know, only 97 (recorded) gay men were sent there. He would have been sent to a regular prison or, if anything, a less notorious labour camp, most likely. And, if he was still hurt from Hazel and Cha-Cha, he would be deemed unfit to work and sent to death upon arrival. He would have been isolated from other prisoners on the basis of homosexuality.  
It'll be more so addressed in the following chapter.
> 
> No warnings for this chapter; nothing violent or graphic.

The briefcase does not, actually, have a ton of money or pawnable items inside of it. He doesn't actually ever see the inside of it, now that he thinks of it. All he sees is a flash of blinding blue that devours him and throws him into a void for an intermediate amount of time and sends him tumbling into another time. To be exact, it sends him tumbling into a bookcase and almost losing the towel still desperately clinging to his hips. How it's not been lost is nothing short of a miracle. 

It's almost pitch black inside, curtains drawn completely over every window and every door, and the only light that does flicker in the maze of books he's in comes from that of burning candles all placed away from the windows. He sits up, looking around. It seems as if he's in a bookshop and, as he listens carefully, he can hear the floorboards above him creaking with slow, hesitant footsteps. A door creaks open and, in an American accent, a voice calls out; _"Hallo?"_

"Uh, hi?" Klaus responds, lifting his head up. The door creaks open a little more and a man steps out. The candles cast flickering shadows bouncing around his face, shadowing his eyes and highlighting his cheeks and his amber hair. 

"English? _Deutsche?_" The man asks. Klaus blinks. He knows a little German, enough to be conversational and bullshit his way through a trip through Germany, probably.

"Uh... English?" Klaus responds, sounding just as questioning. The man looks Klaus up and down, then, zoning in on the lack of clothes and the wounds. His shoulders slump in something akin to sympathy and anger. 

"Do you need help?" He asks, and he takes a few steps closer to eye the door behind Klaus. "Did anyone follow after you?" 

Klaus glances over his shoulder. "No," he says, then shakes his head. "No one did."

The man sighs in relief, then helps Klaus up. They take silent steps through the bookshop and go up a set of stairs, then into an apartment joined above this library or bookshop. The man unlocks the door and locks it again behind them, and he leads the way down a corridor and into a small bathroom. It's a small, cosy place, but rather bare besides old nick knacks. It's old, too, unlike any house Klaus has been in. It reminds him of what grandparents houses are supposed to look like - not that he would know that, but movies taught him what the Academy never would. 

"Hey, uh, not to sound _weird, _but where am I?" Klaus asks as he sits on the closed lid of a toilet, the briefcase pressing heavily against his calve while this man searches near bare cabinets for some remnants of a first aid kit and lights another candle for some light.

"Berlin," the man says, eying Klaus. "Are you not from here?"

Klaus swallows down the urge to laugh. "You could say that. And, uh, one more weird question; what year is it?"

The man's eyebrows draw together and he gives him a long look. "Did they hit your head?" He asks, only half sarcastically. "Nineteen-forty-three." Then, "July the sixteenth."

"Ah." Klaus tips his head back. "Of course." Then the year strikes a cord in him and he chokes on the air in his lungs. "Wait, what?"

"Sorry if you forgot about the war. Berlin isn't the ideal holiday destination at the moment," the man quips sarcastically, then he slides over to Klaus' side. "It might sting." He begins to dab away the blood trailing from Klaus' ears first, then moves onto the wounds on his back. "What were these from?" He asks, and his voice is quiet. 

Klaus tries to remember. Hazel and Cha-Cha were creative even with limited resources. He grunts and rolls his shoulders slightly. "Belt," he says. Cha-Cha had gotten fed up with him running his mouth and his back was a mess of lashes from leather and cuts and bruises from the buckle. The man hisses a sigh between his teeth and shakes his head, and Klaus realises he must think Klaus got beat up on the streets or something. 

"And these?"

"Cigarettes."

"That?" 

"Oh, a knife." 

Fingers brush over his neck. "Some wire, or something." Klaus shrugs off each backstory to each wound as the man works over the worst ones first. He lets him patch him up with precise, careful touches, the man leaning close to see in the dim firelight. 

"What's your name?" Klaus asks, eyes glancing at him. 

"Dave. Dave Katz," says the man. "You?"

"Klaus Hargreeves," he introduces. The man nods and then holds out a hand in offering and Klaus accepts it, curling their hands together. 

"Well, nice to meet you, Klaus. Maybe not under the best circumstances, but..." Dave shrugs and Klaus snorts at that. Dave's lips curl upwards at Klaus.

"Nice to meet you too, Dave." He turns to let him see him his cut side easier. 

"I don't think I'm one to say anything, but if I were you, I'd wash that off my face."

Klaus' eyebrows furrow. "Wash what?" He stands, turning to the hanging mirror above the sink and he eyes himself, turning his head this way and that to catch himself in the candle light. Then he notices the glitter. Smeared purple eyeshadow and eyeliner leave tracks down his cheeks. _1943_. Right. His heart stammers inexplicably as he looks back at Dave. He's dealt with his fair share of homophobia in the 2000s, and he has reason to believe the 40s wouldn't be any better. Dave must catch his wide eyed, deer-in-headlights expression, for he waves a hands and focuses instead on putting away the unused first aid kit.

"As far as I'm concerned, we're in the same boat," he states simply. He jabs a finger to his neck from which hangs a simple golden chain, and a star of David hangs off of it. Klaus lets out a little _ah._ And then he thinks, _oh, shit. _Reality dawns on him slowly and not all together. He understands, now, the situation, and what Dave's implying, and what this whole thing means, but it doesn't really _hit_ him. He just scrubs off the old makeup from his face until he looks unlike himself. Dave hands him a towel to dry his face. 

"You should stay here tonight," Dave says. "It's not a good idea to be out at night." 

"I think I could agree with that," Klaus muttered. He glanced to the covered window and resisted the urge to open the curtains and peer outside. "You don't happen to have a drink?" 

Dave jerks his head to the side slightly, indicating him to follow as he picks up the little candle in its holder and guides him quietly through the house. "My sisters are asleep," he states in a murmur. Klaus nods his head as he follows him into the kitchen where he silently closes the door.

The kitchen's small with light green walls that look dark in the light, with a round wooden table and floral patterned cushions. Klaus slinks into a chair as Dave fishes out two glasses and fills both with water and slides one into Klaus' grasp. It's virtually Heaven on his throat, still rough and dry after the torture with Hazel and Cha-Cha. 

"You can sleep in my bed if you want. I don't think you'd want to sleep on the couch with those wounds." He gestures vaguely at Klaus, whom snorted in response. 

"I've had worse," he responds. "Slept on worse, I mean, but I guess you could count the wounds, too. I don't want to intrude." But, at the same time, where is he supposed to go? Other than back to his own time, of course, but he can't just do that in front of this man, can he? And he left the briefcase in the bathroom, anyway. He could do with a rest. He's still high strung from the whole ordeal of being tortured and going through withdrawals and then being thrown into a different timeline entirely, and he thinks he deserve a nights sleep.

Dave stares at him for several seconds, looking slightly disturbed, and then he swallows, licks his lips, and nods. "Well, you can still get the bed tonight," he states. Klaus sips his water and swallows, then offers a soft smile. The man, although he can't really see him all that well in the poor candle light, is far from ugly. His eyes flicker between dark amber and honey in the candlelight, and his cheeks are splattered with small freckles. His hair lays in brown curls atop his head and he has a strong jaw, an arched nose, and broad shoulders, and his voice is something soft and comforting. 

"So, where are you from then, Klaus?" Dave inquires. Klaus drums his fingers along the glass of water in his hands and wishes it was vodka. There's floral coasters on the table, four of them, and matching place mats set in front of each seat at the table. In the centre stands an empty vase, and Klaus could imagine some white lilies sprouting from it, petals stretching out and adding to the room. There's a framed painting of a lighthouse surrounded by fields of lavender, and there's a photo of a family hung up on the wall by the door. 

"America," says Klaus. "You from here?"

Dave shakes his head. "America, too. I moved here for family a few years ago. You?"

Klaus presses his lips together. "It was... a bit unplanned, you could say," he finally settles on. Dave snorts softly.

"Why not," he utters jokingly and Klaus smiles, spreading his hands out. Dave quirks an eyebrow. "A story behind those?"

Klaus, as if he's forgotten about the tattoos, turns his hands up to look at his palms. _HELLO. GOODBYE._

Klaus shrugs. "If there was, I can't remember," he says. "Fun night out." He winks and Dave laughs. "Plus, it's great for conversation." He waves his _GOODBYE _hand pointedly. "How many sisters have you got?" 

"Two," says Dave. "Louise is ill, though. I've been looking after her as well as I can, with Amalie. We run the bookstore downstairs, but it's been... slow."

Klaus nods his head. "Sorry to hear about that," he offers tentatively. Dave sighs and shrugs, then nods his head at him. 

"Where's your family?" He asks.

Klaus blows out a long breath. "America, still," he says, and it's not technically a lie. He wonders what Reginald's doing in that moment, and the thought of Reginald being around, and being younger, is uncomfortable. "We're... kind of dysfunctional. Don't talk a lot to one another, you know how it is."

Dave hums. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that."

Klaus repeats his shrug. "You get used to it," he states. He glances around, then, and he realises that Ben isn't there. It's odd being without him, he realises, after so long with him by his side like a shadow. He isn't entirely sure how to feel about his absence, for whenever he expects Ben's usual commentary or advice, silence answers him. It's eerie and he doesn't like it, but at the same time, he doesn't feel much like dealing with his family, Ben or not. 

Dave takes a sip of his water. "Where are your clothes?" He asks suddenly. Klaus startles at the question, looking down at the towel still around his hips. He blinks. 

"I... don't have any," he says slowly, drawing each word out. "I, well, you see... I don't particularly have a place here, or any clothes with me. I was... mugged." Klaus' eyes narrow suspiciously in thought and he looks away, avoiding Dave's sceptical gaze. The brunette sighs in the way one might in fond exasperation of an old, mischievous friend or a child, and he shakes his head and stands up.

"You're odd, Klaus," he states. Klaus' lips peel back into a wide smile.

"If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that, I, well, I think I'd literally be a millionaire. No exaggeration."

Dave snorts. "Here, come on. You can borrow some of mine, then." He stands, leaving his water on a coaster, and so does Klaus, following him out of the kitchen and quietly down a cream-painted hallway. There's shelves that look as if they're supposed to be full of little ornaments and nick knacks, and there still are some, but they look odd sitting there, like little pieces of a lost puzzle left in the hopes that it'll be completed. Inexplicably, it stirs something within him, and he has to turn away from them and continue after Dave.

Dave's room is small and only has a single bed in it with forest green covers, and he has paintings hung up around the room, and some pieces of paper; letters, Klaus realises when he's close enough to read it properly. Dave lights a few candles sat around on the bedside table, a desk by a window, and a few on a couple of shelves. He walks up to the dresser pressed into the far corner of the room, nearby the oak desk, of which is home to stacks of paper and pencils and some thick novels, and he opens one of the drawers, looks Klaus up an down, and then he fumbles around in the drawers before he pulls out a shirt and a pair of pants. 

"They might be a bit loose on you," Dave comments as he hands the clothes over. 

"It's no bother," dismisses Klaus, and as Dave gravitates towards the door, Klaus glances up. "Thank you," he says. 

Dave looks back over his shoulder and tips his head in a gentle nod. "No problem, Klaus. Try and get some sleep, yeah? Blow the candles out before you sleep, please." 

Klaus returns the nod, and then Dave leaves, gently closing the door behind him. Klaus lets his gaze linger on the door before he busies himself with the clothes, distantly noticing same heavy Star of David patch that seems to be sewn onto all of his shirts, some more frayed, more used, and, curiosity getting the better of him, he takes time to snoop around Dave's room briefly. He peers at the photographs around the room; some of Dave and his family, some of who he assumes must be friends, buildings and beaches and animals. He wonders if they're photographs he's bought and hung or if they're all photographs Dave has taken himself, and he finds his eyes drawn to a specific photo that captures a fox, curled up in some flowers, its tail covering its snout. It's a peaceful picture, simple but serene, and Klaus can see each individual stroke of its fur, the fade of fiery orange and blacks and whites. He can see its paws tucked beneath its snout.

His eyes gloss over the letter pinned up on his wall, but he sees how its lovingly signed _with love, ma, _and he feels too intrusive looking at it. Eventually he just goes around the room, blowing out the candles settled around it, and then he lowers himself onto the bed. He crawls beneath the thick covers and then he blows out the candle on the bedside table and rests his head on the pillow and closes his eyes. 

It's not _really _hit him, the situation he's in. The fact that he's been thrown into a different timeline, and certainly not the best one he could have gotten. But he has a surprisingly soft bed beneath him, and his throat isn't so painfully dry, and he's warm, comfortable, and, most importantly, exhausted. And so he decides that everything can wait until tomorrow, until he's had some rest and time to think, and then he'll deal with everything. 

He wakes up to the door creaking open and Dave's head peering inside, eyes seeking him out. Klaus blinks sleep from his eyes, adjusting to the light that filters in beneath the curtains by the windows, and then he turns his gaze to Dave. He sits up slightly and Dave stands upright. 

"Morning," he says. Klaus tips his head.

"Mornin'," he returns in a sleep-thick voice.

"I just wanted to check in on you," Dave says. "Sleep alright?"

"Like a baby." Klaus sits up, letting the thick bed covers fall down. 

"Good," says Dave. "If you're hungry, I'm fixing up some breakfast. It's not much, but we can share."

Klaus hadn't eaten since those crackers while the house was being shot up, and his stomach twists eagerly at the idea of food, but he hesitates, eyebrows raising slightly. "Oh, I shouldn't..." He utters and trails off. He swings his legs out over the edge of the bed, standing up to his feet and rolling his shoulders, stretching his arms up above his head, bones popping. Dave shakes his head.

"You look like you could use it," he states, waving his hand. 

"Well... I _would_ appreciate it." Dave snorts softly, then gestures for Klaus to follow after him and back into the kitchen. At the table sits a slender woman with shoulder length brunette curls, nursing a warm cup of tea between her hands. She glances up as Dave and Klaus enter, her eyes wary on Klaus.

"Amalie, this is Klaus. Klaus; Amalia."

Klaus waves his _HELLO _hand, a smile spreading his lips. "Hello," he says. "Ah, it's nice to meet you." She doesn't look particularly open to befriending Klaus. A pair of glasses sit on her nose and behind the lenses her eyes are uninterested, sharp and cold, and they track him as he comes inside. He feels like she could see right into his soul in that moment, as if she would be able to call him out on everything he's ever done in life and maintain eye contact while doing it. She makes Klaus want to hunker down in the seat, make himself small and non threatening. 

Amalia hesitates, as if waiting to see Klaus do something bad, say something wrong. Then she nods her head and offers a hand, dropping it after Klaus shakes it. She turns her attention back to her tea, busying herself with sipping it and looking outside the window and onto the streets. As Dave busies himself with the kitchen, Klaus gravitates to the window and peers outside. It must still be early, but he can see people on the streets on their way to work. He sees a group of young girls putting up a poster on a wall outside, and he almost chokes when he sees the swastikas on the majority of posters around every billboard and on every lamp post and on people's clothes, their uniforms, in buildings and on flags and banners. Across the street sits a small shop, lights off, windows vandalised with the Star of David and the word _Jude _painted across it. The girls putting up the poster continue on their day, and people continued on their way to work, and someone tried to sell newspapers on the streets, and people walked with swastikas around their arms. The sight hits something innate in Klaus, and he's struck with the urge to throw the curtains closed and to block out such a symbol from his sight. 

He doesn't, however, but instead just forces himself to look away and sit down at the kitchen table. 

Dave sets a cup of steaming tea in front of him, followed by buttered and jam toast. A radio splutters to life and Klaus picks up whatever he can from the static German it emits. He utters a detached thanks to Dave and moves with robotic movements to lift the toast to his mouth and bite into, and then alternate between that and the tea. 

Dave sits down with his own tea and toast, and he listens to the radio distractedly. 

"She was coughing again," says Amalie to Dave. She turns to face him, one leg crossed over the other, her nails tapping anxiously on the wooden table, her other hand holding the toast a few inches from her mouth. Dave sighs and scrubs a hand down his face, eyes flicking from the radio and back to her.

"There's nothing more we can do," he mutters with the shake of his head. "And if we had any supplies, no one would sell to us."

Amalie's expression turns cold, then, and more so when a cough echoes, muffled, from another bedroom. She curls her tapping hand into a tight fist, her lips pressing together in a straight line. "I know," she finally says, and the admission sounds as if it was painful for her to say. Klaus, again, feels rather like an intruder as he listens to their exchange, his eyes trained on the pattern of wood on the table in the kitchen. He focuses on trying to wrap his mind around everything, nibbling absentmindedly at the toast hanging from his fingertips.

He feels like, already, the image of literal swastikas and banners are burned into his mind. It's some kind of innate fear learned through history textbooks associated to such a thing, he thinks, or it must be, but vibrant red banners have a different effect than the black and white grainy photos of the past, or shaky, graffiti on bridge underpasses. And the fact that the radio spits out Hitler's name every so often as if he's a living person and not just some abhorrent monster of the past, and it all gets twisted somewhere up in his head, a reality not quite gripped yet. The idea of being thrown into the thick of a thriving Nazi rule is incomprehensible. 

Breakfast falls quiet. A tense kind of silence takes Amalie and Dave, and Klaus is glad for his fluency in German if only for the fact that he doesn't catch what the radio says. He knows, though, that all it would be is an eerily normal radio report. Normal for 1943 Berlin, anyway, for they would never report what things Klaus knew were going on elsewhere. He doesn't finish the toast, for which Klaus feels guilty for, but he drains the cup of tea that he was given. 

"Is there anything I can do?" Asks Klaus, turning to look at Dave. "You know, since you let me stay the night."

Dave's eyes flick to him. He presses his lips together and sets his own tea on the coaster to his side, and runs his thumb along the rim of the cup absentmindedly. "Don't worry about it, Klaus," he dismisses. "Honestly."

Klaus slumps slightly, clasping his hands together. "There's got to be something," he says. Something, at least, to soothe his conscience, for now he knows these people who gave him help and hospitality, and he knows their names and their faces, their situation, and he'll have to leave them and just hope that the Katz family didn't suffer the fate of many.

Dave scratches at his jaw, chewing absently at his bottom lip. "If you insist, I s'pose you could help me with the bookshop. Don't get too excited, though, we hardly get customers. But I need to reorganise it."

Klaus nods. "Course," he says, bobbing his head. "Just tell me when."

They go down shortly after breakfast. Amalie returns to the bedroom of their ill sister and Dave and Klaus go downstairs and into the bookshop, unlocking it and opening it up. Dave gives him a quick tour of the shop, pointing out the sections and the bookshelves, and then the mess of books spread out in stacks and on tables around. Klaus gets busy in the work, avoiding looking out the windows. He puts books into sections by genre and by author, and he lines them up so the spine faces outward, and the ones that are stacked he makes even and perfect. The task makes him concentrate more than necessary, but it gives him something to do with his hands and something to occupy his mind with rather than the eerily casual sight that awaits him out of the windows. Occasionally, Dave makes light chat. He mutters about the weather and about a show going on down the street, talks about recipes for dinner and ideas for lunch, and Klaus tells him vague stories of himself, too, leaving out the major points of superpowers, drug addiction, and the Umbrella Academy as a whole. 

Dave's laugh is deep and smooth when unhindered by the unrelenting quiet of night. It reverberates in his throat and seems contagious, bringing out a chuckle in Klaus each time, and Klaus wants to hear it more. Dave tells him about books and his eyes light up in a way Klaus suspects they might not have for a while. He wants to see that look in his eyes, too. 

He asks about the photographs. Dave's cheeks blush pink as he hands a glass of water to Klaus and he leans back against the reception desk, nodding his head. "I like photography, a bit," Dave admits. "There's a lot of scenes that you wouldn't think twice about, that go over your head, unnoticed, and I wanted to capture them. Or there's moments that you wish you could capture perfectly forever, and you can look at it and relive it."

Klaus tries to think of a time in his life that he might want to preserve forever. It takes a while and wading through years worth of memories, but he thinks back to when they were all young at the Academy, all of them together, and the times they would sneak out and go to Griddy's, and they'd run around the streets and the alleys and cause utter mayhem and let go for a night, and even Five would laugh and joke with them. He would preserve those moments, when everyone was innocent and naïve and all together. After then, though, he doesn't think he has a single memory he'd want to revisit for any reason other than to remember a dealer's house or phone number.

"I suppose so," he agrees. 

"Surely you've got some hobbies," says Dave. Klaus tips his head to the side in thought.

"I used to," he admits, shrugging his shoulders. "Not so much anymore."

"Oh? Care to share?"

Klaus glances over at him once more. Dave's busy with rearranging a row of books under the romance section. He'll pick a book up, look at its cover and its back, then run his finger along its spine. Occasionally, he'd flip the book open and let his eyes run over a few beginning sentences to it, and then he'd look rather as if he was having to pull himself out of a trance and force himself to stop reading, and then he'll sit it down in its place on the shelf and move onto the next one. 

Klaus glances away. "I used to draw," he admits quietly. It was something he used to enjoy, even more so when he got to see Reginald's expression whenever he drew on his walls, too. And, he liked to think that he had been pretty good at it, before drugs became a priority and time to sketch on the streets became less of one.

"That's cool," Dave says, glancing up. "I'm no good with a pencil. Would you show me?"

Klaus blinks. "What?"

Dave's cheeks blush, warm rose. "Well, only if you wanted to." He closes a book and hurriedly shoves it into its waiting space. Klaus bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling too widely.

"Maybe," he says. "Maybe."

They keep working. Klaus thinks that the both of them drag it out. It's a simple job of rearranging the bookshop, stocking and organising things, and it's more of a distraction than a job, but it works. It keeps him busy and it keeps his eyes away from the windows. He hears the sounds of people going about the streets, normal, everyday sounds that shouldn't feel so wrong but they somehow do. If he refuses to look at them, he can avoid reality. He can confine reality to this little bookshop and Dave, and pretend like all there is outside is a normal street of 2019. If he focuses on the books, then he can ignore the encroaching sense of unease that's lingered in his bones since breakfast, the sense of wrong that twists his guts.

They get not a single customer. Dave seems to not notice, or he's accustomed to not hearing the chime above the door go off. He closes for dinner and they go back upstairs. Amalie stands by the stove and there's a heavy silence broken only by the sound of cutlery on bowls and the static of radio that drones on in the background, occasionally replaced by a song.

Klaus helps clean the dishes. He sets them aside on the drying board beside the sink, watches the soapy water run off them and drip down the drain, and then he turns to Dave.

"Have you got paper and a pencil?" He asks. Dave looks up, lips twitching, and then he disappears from the kitchen and returns with just that. Klaus sits back at the table with them, and he crosses one leg over the other. Dave doesn't question or pester him, but instead busies himself with drying the dishes, and Klaus watches him as he does so, and then he begins to draw. From his hips up, Dave bleeds onto the paper from the tip of the pencil in his hands, a black and white moment captured and frozen in time on a sheet of paper. Klaus holds it up slightly, tongue poking out from between his teeth, and he mirrors it against Dave, who's stood suspiciously still since he began to draw. Then he signs it with a large, looping signature along the bottom of the paper and he sets it down on the table.

"Have at it," says Klaus, and Dave turns with curiosity sparkling in his eyes, and he slides up to the side of the table and pinches the paper, holding it up to his eyes, and then he smiles. Klaus forces himself to look away as if he isn't as curious of Dave's reaction, and he feigns nonchalance, picking at his fingernails and pursing his lips together. 

"That's... that's really amazing, Klaus," he utters. "Really. It's like a picture."

Klaus shrugs. " 's nothing," he mumbles as if the praise doesn't make him smile.

"You ever thought of selling art? You could make a pretty penny with that, honestly." Dave keeps his eyes on the sketch for several long moments, and then he sets it back down, shaking his head. "Seriously, Klaus. It's amazing."

Klaus waves his hand dismissively. "You're too kind," he drawls. Dave laughs lightly at his tone. "I'll even let you keep it, so when I become the next Van Gogh you can sell it." He winks at Dave, who brushes a hand over the sketch and grins. 

"Should I ask for your autograph now?" Dave asks, and Klaus hums, resting his chin on his hands. 

"I'll make sure to stop by on my world tour."

"You're so generous, Klaus."

Klaus nudges him with his toe. "Just for you." Dave snickers, then gives another glance to the sketch. He picks it up and pins it to a busy pinboard on the wall, dead in the centre. He turns around then smiles proudly at Klaus, who can't help but return a grin.

"How are you feeling?" He asks, and Klaus raises an eyebrow. "The injuries, I mean."

"Ah." Klaus does a brief mental check, rolling his shoulders, curling his toes, ghosting his fingertips over his neck. "Better than yesterday, for sure," he says. "Better than I would have if I kept running around and caught some infection." 

"That's a bonus," says Dave, and Klaus hums his agreement. With a sigh, Klaus heaves himself to his feet. He stretches his arms up above his head. He tips his head side to side. 

"Well, I really appreciate everything, Dave," he begins, and his words follow a similar pattern to every breakup he's had to go through with each boyfriend he's stuck with for use of their own bed. "I really do; you're great. Amazing. But I really ought to, you know, hit the road."

Dave eyes him for a moment, evidently not expecting the shift in conversation, and then he nods. "That's fine," he says, shifting slightly. "Of course." His eyes flick to the side. "But it's late. It might be for the best if you wait until the morning, at least."

Klaus shifts his weight from foot to foot, head tipping side to side as he draws out a breath. He shouldn't. He really shouldn't. He's not supposed to be here in the first place. His eyes gravitate towards his own sketch, hanging over Dave's shoulder like a shadow. But it's been a long day and he could get some rest, make the bed, and then, before Dave or Amalie wakes up, find his briefcase and leave.

"Well, I guess you've got a point," Klaus sighs, and Dave smiles. At night, Klaus says his goodnight and retreats into the bedroom he's borrowing, and he lights enough candles to see where he's going. He sits on the edge of the bed, listening to footsteps shuffle around the apartment. He clasps his hands together on his lap. His eyes turn to the window, still shielded by thick curtains, and he doesn't risk looking past them, peering out onto the streets. What he does do instead is take a seat by the desk, find a spare piece of writing paper and a pen, and he begins to draw. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll address things and try and put warnings in the chapter notes when needed, and if anyone has any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach me on Tumblr @veteranklaus or in the comments.


	3. Chapter 3

When he's forced awake, it's to harsh knocking on the door. Not the bookshop door downstairs, but the apartment door down the corridor. It's still dark and it takes Klaus several moments to adjust to the darkness. He sits up, eyebrows furrowing. The knocking pauses for a few seconds, then resumes. Klaus slips out of the bed and, with silent footsteps, he creeps to the bedroom door and peers out. In the corridor he can see Dave and Amalia, arguing in hushed voices in the dark, and then Dave pushes her in the direction of the bedroom he's never seen. 

"Dave?" Klaus whispers, and Dave's head turns quickly to look at him. He's wide eyed, his shoulders tense and high, and he struggles to find words to say. Then he stands up straighter and nods his head back to the bedroom door Klaus came from, and Klaus swallows. He takes a few slinking steps back until he can slowly close the door, leaving it ajar just a crack to peer out. Dave turns to the door and unlocks it, pulling it open before the person on the other side can knock again. 

A mans voice echoes out in German, quick and sharp words that Klaus can't quite catch, and he can't quite see them from his poor spot of peering out from the door. He looks around the bedroom, then, eyes seeking out his briefcase only to realise that it's not in the room. Dave must have put it elsewhere after that first night. The other people's voices get louder and Amalie comes out of the room, gliding to Dave's side and spitting words back. They say something and Dave turns to glance down the corridor, and Klaus jumps away from the crack in the door. He takes a few steps back, and then footsteps come to his door and Dave knocks gently then opens it.

"What's happening?" Klaus asks. "What time is it?" 

"Nothing," says Dave, shaking his head. "You just need to come with me, yeah?" 

Klaus narrows his eyes, but he gets the idea that this isn't something he can negotiate, so he simply bites his tongue and follows him out of the bedroom. By the door stands a group of uniformed men, and they eye Klaus with contempt and cold eyes. They talk and Klaus catches Dave and Amalie saying things like _sister _and _sick, _and he hears things like _transport _and _leave, _but he never hears enough to understand where the conversation's going. Amalie guides two men down the corridor to the bedroom of their sick sister, and one other man says something, and Dave turns to Klaus.

"Your bag's in the-"

The man says something, cutting Dave off. Dave looks between him and Klaus, shaking his head. _"Englisch," _says Dave. _"Er spricht nur Englisch."_

"Dave," mutters Klaus, because he's getting the distinct impression that something isn't good, right now. 

"Your bag's in the living room, Klaus, go get it please," Dave requests. He gestures to the living room door and gives Klaus a little nudge towards it. Klaus lingers for a moment, but then hurries off towards the living room. He fumbles to find the briefcase tucked neatly into the side beside a couch. He grabs it, eying the man that followed him and stands, now, in the doorway like some ominous shadow, clad in dark uniform and a swastika band around his arm. He looks not at all happy to be there, watching Klaus grab the briefcase and tracking his every movements, and he makes no move to step aside from the doorway when Klaus has to slip back out past him. Klaus gets the impression, too, that should he have brushed past him, the man would certainly not have appreciated that.

He stands back by the front door, alone save for the uniformed men, and he clutches the briefcase to his chest and tries not to make eye contact with any of them until one of them says _boy, look, _and he does. The men part by the door and point outside, then points more vigorously when Klaus doesn't move. He looks over his shoulder to where he can hear everyone, but then he's being turned back around to face the finger pointing out the door. 

He awkwardly makes his way down the stairs. Any time he tries to look over his shoulder, his vision's blocked by that of a uniformed chest following him like a shadow. They walk through the bookshop, and in this situation, it feels wrong. It's just as dark and the shelves feel ominous, like witnesses to the beginning of something terrible, all holding their breath and peering out through gapped fingers at him. The novels on the shelves turn away from him, shunning him like an audience witnessing his demise as he walks among them and towards the door. 

He opens the door when the man behind him doesn't tell him to stop walking, and the cold air of the night greets him. A breeze chases itself down the street and blows Klaus' hair back, away from his face and his forehead, and he takes a brief moment to look around. It feels surreal. The streets are evidently unfamiliar to him, the buildings dark and looming far above him on either side, and the cobbles beneath his feet, of which he realises are bare, are cold and demanding of his attention. Every sign and poster is in a language unfamiliar to his own, one of which he can only understand perhaps a word or two, and everything on the street, from font style, art style, posters, and cars are old and vintage, and the reality he tried so hard to ignore and push away forces its way to him. He feels lost in a way that he never really has before. At least high or drunk as all hell in some unfamiliar street back home was still _home. _Still the city he knew he was in. 

He has no time to think about it. He's pushed forwards and towards a vehicle, and pointed into the back of it. His eyes linger on the man, the officer, and then look back up into the apartment. Dave's yet to come down and being thrust into this unfamiliar place and time, alone, makes Klaus incredibly tense. But he gets into the back of the vehicle because he doesn't want to risk not doing it. 

He sits in the back by himself in some kind of semi detached daze. His eyes burn into the cobbles outside and he listens to shoes clicking hurriedly on the ground. A family comes in and sits in the back with him; a mother and a father, a new born swaddled in blankets, and a young child blinking sleep from her eyes. They eye Klaus and Klaus eyes them back, then waits. 

Dave comes, finally, accompanied by Amalie, and they both flank a pale, sickly looking woman who needs their help to get inside the vehicle. They all have bags with them, all looking full, and all of them look confused. The vehicle drives briefly and then stops to let more tired people on until there's no more room for them, and then the vehicle starts again and doesn't slow down.

"Dave," says Klaus, his voice quiet. "What were they saying?" 

Dave lifts his head to look at him, blinking a few times. "Hm? Oh," he glances aside. "Relocation," Dave tells him, and he frowns. "We're being relocated."

The word rings a bell in his head. He sits there and mulls it over, repeats it in his head. Relocation, relocation, relocation. Then, oh, he remembers.

Reginald did have tutors brought into the Academy to teach them. They had English tutors and math tutors, biology and chemistry and physics tutors. They had psychology and geography and language tutors, and, for a while, they had a history tutor. And, of course, they covered such a pivotal moment in history, the one he currently lived in. 

Klaus inhales shakily, and then looks to the doors of the truck with the overwhelming need to get out. He gets up, one hand on one of the walls to steady himself, and tries to open the doors. Of course, they don't open and don't budge, not even when he grows more frantic and digs his nails in and shakes the doors, or when he shoves them and hits the palms of his hands against them. 

"Klaus - Klaus! Sit down," says Dave, reaching out to try and grasp his shirt and pull him back. The vehicle slides to a stop rather abruptly and Klaus almost trips over as it does. A door slams at the front and everyone falls silent, and then the doors in front of Klaus open. One of the officers stand there, and his voice melts into an argument with Klaus', a mix of _let me out, you have to let me out, let me out, _and cold words that Klaus can only catch a few of, _sit down, sit, quiet, stop, no. _Klaus insists as if he thinks he can reason or slip out of the vehicle and situation like he has many times before. The man rose his voice louder into a violent bellow, and he put his hand behind his back, and Dave leaned forwards, grabbed Klaus' arm and yanked him right back, holding his other hand up and saying _es tut ihm leid, es tut ihm leid, es tut ihm leid!_

_Ungrateful, _mutters the officer in what seems like a violent lecture, muttering and curses and shaking his head. He points a finger at Klaus, still anchored by Dave's hand gripping his arm, and, despite the words not really registering in Klaus' mind, Klaus understands well enough the gist of _don't do that again._

The doors slam shut again and Klaus slides down the wall as the vehicle starts up again, and he covers his mouth with his hands. What's one more night, he tells himself bitterly, what's one more night, what could happen in a few hours, after all? 

He doesn't know how long the drive is. It gets bright outside and the child in the back with them whines about the long drive and feeling hungry and thirsty. The doors don't open again and Klaus doesn't try to open them, and they only ever talk in hushed voices and whispers. The baby cries and doesn't stop and Dave's ill sister coughs whenever she's awake and wheezes between each bout. No one opens the doors, tells them anything or gives them anything. Klaus drums his fingers over his lap in a rapid rhythm. He falls asleep at one point and wakes up when the vehicle jumps on a bumpy road and he hits his head and spends the remainder of the ride with a pounding headache. But eventually, at some point, the vehicle slows down and eventually comes to a halt, the engine turning off, and by then Klaus' body feels stiff with being so cramped for so long. The doors open and he blinks against the blinding light that floods them, and the children cry again and the sick sister groans as Dave and Amalie help her off the vehicle. 

Klaus grips the briefcase so hard he thinks it might break his nails as they approach a platform to board a train of cattle cars. They look full already, and there's a crowd of people being herded into them. They're ushered quickly into one car, almost tripping over others in their attempt to find some kind of space to stand or sit on. And when Klaus thinks that no one else can surely fit in, and he feels thoroughly uncomfortable with how many people he can feel against himself, they push more people on. And only when Klaus can't see the doors over people's heads and shoulders, two buckets are handed inside; one empty, one full of water. And then the door slams shut, encasing them once more in darkness save for the stream coming in through small vents, and the train staggers slowly to a start. 

The car is full of families, of young couples, elders, children and toddlers and babies, and of sick people and people that aren't moving and people that only move when they cough, and what room isn't taken up by bodies is taken up by their luggage. Klaus turns, then, to look at Dave, sat beside him. He's looking off into the distance as if he can see beyond the walls of the cattle car, and Klaus leans closer to him. 

"You do understand," whispers Klaus, "what's happening, right?"

Dave blinks and turns to him, eyebrows furrowing slightly. "What do you mean?" 

"Where we're going. What's happening."

"They didn't tell us where we're going," states Dave. But Klaus knows. Maybe not specifically where they're going, but the end result is all similar, and the intentions all the same. 

"Of course," utters Klaus. He swallows and he watches Dave's face and tries to wake himself up from this odd, twisted dream. He tries to look for Ben, tries to draw him out and call him, but there's not a single sight, a single whisper of his presence around. Evidently, the briefcase didn't bring him back as well, and Klaus is alone. Alone despite the people packed in the cattle car with him, anyway.

The doors don't open again. No one comes in, no one says anything, no one refreshes the water as it begins to get low in the bucket and no one brings in food when the children begin to cry. People talk, and he catches words of speculation, wondering where they're going, when the train will finally come to a stop and they'll get out. And Klaus remains like an outsider among them all. He sits there with his knees pulled up and his arms wrapped around them, and he gives the water to someone else whenever he's offered it if he feels he doesn't really need it, and he doesn't talk to Dave or either of his sisters. He doesn't belong here. He doesn't share what all these people do, only caught by the coincidence of him borrowing Dave's shirt with a star sewn into it, only caught by his own procrastination. Somehow this makes him feel guilty.

The people around him sit in ignorance and confusion as the car grows lighter and darker as time passes, and they don't know, but Klaus does. Maybe not the specifics, but he knows what they don't. He knows the path they're on and the way it'll come to an end, and he's shoved his way into this group of suffering people and twisted their suffering onto himself, posing as an imposter who could never truly share or understand it. 

Time passes. People, mostly the old or the ill, go to sleep and don't wake up. Klaus falls asleep and wakes up once because his stomach churns and twists violently in a demand for food. It gets cold at nights and Klaus catches sleep in short moments and he dreams about the Academy, and he wonders how long he's been missing and how long it'll take the siblings to notice he's gone. They've got to.

Time passes. Louise falls quiet. Klaus watches, while Dave and Amalie are asleep, as Louise's chest stops rising and falling, and when they wake up he holds Dave and tells him _he's sorry, he's so sorry, she's somewhere better, _even if the latter is a lie because she's still on the train and looking at her own body. But at least she wouldn't be there to reach the destination, Klaus thinks. Once, Dave shakes him awake and apologises when Klaus groans, but it's because _you looked very still, and I thought..._

Time passes until it stops, and Klaus feels more anxious when it finally draws to a stop than when he got on. People shake one another awake and look towards the doors as other cars are opened and, eventually, their own door, too, revealing a dark night sky and officers and dogs and a sight that's only supposed to exist in history textbooks, in ruins and in black and white, not lit up and swarming with people and right in front of him. 

_Leave the bags, _they're told. Klaus clutches his briefcase and he can't bring himself to get up, to let go of it. He sits as other people push their way past him to get off the train, and he stares out, past everyone else, and at the fences and the guns and the tracks and the buildings. He wonders if he can pass for a body and have a moment to himself to open the briefcase and figure out how to work this damned machine.

"Klaus," says Dave, tugging his arm. "You need to get up. You need to leave the bag and get up."

"Auschwitz," says Klaus, uttering it from his tongue and his teeth, and it falls flat, hollow. "We're in fucking Auschwitz."

Dave's eyebrows furrow. "You need to get up, Klaus-" He's cut off by an alarm that blares over loudspeakers and then a voice in German. _Trucks, _Klaus catches, and he can see them all sitting further down, headlights on, engines purring. _Trucks _and _shot, _and words that make Dave go shrill. He grabs Klaus, then, forces him to drop the briefcase, and they run off the train. Klaus stumbles over his own feet, his legs ignoring his orders to move and move fast after days of immobility, and he doesn't know where Dave's sister is.

"What is it?" Klaus splutters, hauling himself up. Everyone's running, then, all towards the trucks, hauling people with them and throwing themselves into the trucks with a sudden burst of energy no ones had in the past however many days.

"Get to the trucks," Dave tells him, and they stumble, fall to the ground together, and scramble back upright. Klaus feels dizzy and weightless and their running turns to some kind of limp-jog, and Dave hastily adds, "or they'll shoot us."

Klaus can't find any words to splutter his response, and so he simply runs. They near a truck that's not full and, just before they can reach it, it drives away. They stagger in the dust it leaves, puffing up into the air behind its wheels, and then they turn towards the nearest truck and try again. The outcome's the same, the truck driving away feet from them, and Klaus can't find it in his limbs to keep running. He pushes Dave away from him in the direction of one of the other trucks. There's something in his eyes, though, some kind of desperation Klaus thinks, or the same fear of being alone that he feels, especially now with his sister lost somewhere in the fray or in one of the trucks, hopefully. And so Klaus forces himself to his feet, and they both trudge to a truck and watch it leave with enough space for two more people. 

The briefcase, Klaus tells himself. He needs to go find it and get the hell away from here. But their luggage is already being sorted and taken by other people, and there's an uncountable amount of bags and briefcases and he can't distinguish which one is his, or where it is. He stands in the mess of people gripping one another close to themselves in fear, watching each nearby officer for every movement. 

_Line up in fives, _orders the officers, bellowing it out above them all, and the people who couldn't make it to the trucks all begin to line up, large families clinging together, children crying, dogs barking. For a moment, Klaus loses Dave. He can't see him and can't distinguish where one line ends and where another begins, and he feels like he's stuck in the middle of a crowd, drowning in wide eyed people, and someone grips his arm tightly, suddenly, and he turns to see a skinny man with dark eyes who must be in his forties. _How old are you, _Klaus understands, and he swallows, trying to find his voice again. He rakes through all his memories until he can murmur out, _"dreißig."_

The man shakes his head, his fingers bruising around Klaus' arm. _Lie, _he says. _Lie. Stand tall, be quiet. If you're too old, don't tell the truth. If you're too young, don't tell the truth._

He lets go and Klaus stumbles away from him, and he's gone to the lines, and he falls against someone else and is pushed away, and then he sees Dave. He shoves his way into his line, catching the last space and grabbing his arm. 

"I thought you were lost," utters Dave, and he looks around. Officers and doctors begin to prowl the lines, inspecting each person. Klaus feels urgency crawl up his throat.

"How old are you?" He asks. He's lost, and now he's utterly, completely fucked. He doesn't know where his briefcase is or where the luggage is even being taken, and he's utterly _fucked._ He digs his nails into Dave, who swallows.

"Thirty-two," he says. 

"Lie. Say you're younger," Klaus tells him, and he wonders, vaguely, where the man who told Klaus this went. 

There's a family of three in the line with them. A mother and two children, one Klaus thinks must be around fifteen, the other young, dazed, gripping her mother's hand and looking at nothing in particular. The officer questions the older child while the doctor looks them up and down, and then the two of them talk amongst one another. Then they turn to the mother and tell her to _pick. __Go either with your youngest or your eldest._

And she cries. She holds both children close to her and pleads to stay with both of them, and she wails horrifically, a haunting tone that echoes in Klaus' skull like a reverberating drum. The officer picks for her. She's sent to one side with her youngest child while her older one is sent to the other, and then Dave steps forwards, and he swallows around the thick dread in his throat to declare himself twenty-four, and after a thorough look over by the doctor, he's sent to the side the older kid went to. Klaus steps forwards. He tries to hold his head high and tries to breathe evenly, tries to keep his voice steady as he says _"dreiundzwanig." _He says, also, that he's fit. He's well in health, and he's an artist, because no occupation can't be good in any case. They consider it for a while, consider him and toy his fate from hand to hand, resting it entirely on the direction of which way the man's thumb points. 

He doesn't know entirely what groups they're being split into. The two men in front of him spend an unnerving amount of time discussing Klaus as if he isn't standing right there, but eventually they send him in the direction of Dave. Everyone was being lined up elsewhere and no one dared utter a single sound from their lips, save for the crying child who fails to console himself, torn from his family and trying to seek them out from where he stands. Klaus doesn't dare do anything more than look around at this sight of mass murder he's standing in, and he thinks to himself, _what's the harm in one more night?_

More people join their line. More people get sent to the other side. Young people or old people or sick people or mothers with children, and the sight makes Klaus waver. He stands with his guts wringing in horror and dread, and he stands despite the shake in his knees, and the cotton stuffed inside his head. He stands for so long he thinks he might end up falling asleep upright or just collapsing, and he stands for longer, still.

Then they begin to walk. They march away from the train tracks and the cattle cars and Klaus wonders if they're marching them right to some huge ditch to shoot them all. 

He hadn't really noticed it in the rush to get off the train and to get to a truck, but he notices it now; the smoke in the air and the distinct smell of burning. It's bitter in his nose and foul smelling, and Klaus knows what they're burning. He knows the fate of everyone around him and everyone who left on the trucks and everyone who got split into the other group and he knows his fate, too, and all he can do is march.

They walk into a building. A large hall with benches and hooks and more soldiers that tell them to take off their clothes and leave them there, because the clothes aren't theirs anymore. Klaus peels his clothes off with robotic, shaky movements, folding them and placing them aside. He has no shoes to take off. People try to keep some modesty, and Klaus knows there's no point. He flows with some fascinated detachment, folding the clothes and leaving them, and following when they're lead further, and he says nothing when they're deloused, nothing when unwelcome hands twist him this way and that and a razor takes away his hair in clumps, leaving it to fall to the floor, and his head's pushed this way and that, and he doesn't say a thing. Someone grabs his wrist and holds his arm out and the tattoo artist there takes a moment to look at the tattoos on his hands and the umbrella on his forearm, shows an officer the ones on his hands, then turns his arm slightly and replaces his name with a number. He doesn't speak as they strip away Klaus Hargreeves and put in his place _143,627. _

He only speaks when they step under the freezing cold spray of water in the showers. He looks at Dave and, in a low, rasped whisper, he states, "we're going to die."

Dave stares at him for several moments, body shaking minutely under the shower, and his face looks sharper without the mess of brown curls that used to sit atop his head and brush down his forehead. He swallows, tongue heavy in his mouth, and then he clears his throat and looks away.

"I don't know where Amalie is," he utters. Klaus averts his gaze and closes his eyes, tips his head down.

"I don't know." He doesn't know where she is, but he knows that they won't see her again. 

He falls silent when they leave the showers and are given identical uniforms that don't fit, and falls silent when he's given ink to put his number, his name, onto a patch on this new uniform, loose on his shoulders but falling short of his wrists, and his toes tease the edge of the shoes he's given, ever so slightly too small. He keeps his mouth shut when they lined up to be registered, to be documented and tracked, shackled and locked into this place by the numbers on their skin and their uniforms. He watches as an officer asks a man his name and he watches when the same man crumbles to the floor because he said his _old name, _not the number he is now, and Klaus engraves his number into his mind. _143,627. 143,627. 143,627. _

He stands and their voices wash over him, falling onto deaf ears, muffled through water. He's marked onto a register, and failure to be present means his own death and many others, and he knows this before anyone else beside him does. He looks at the people around him, and he still feels like an imposter, like an intruder. He's shoved his way into this time and into this place, and he knows that in a handful of months, only a handful of them will still be alive. His picture will be either lost to time or lost to the thousands of others, his name lost in the midst of thousands of others, and his family will never know what happened to him, if they even notice. 

But for now his family's years away, and so is home, and he's confined to his prison of 1943, confined to a time that only exists in surviving photographs to serve as a lesson for humanity, condemned to death because of his own mistakes, and Klaus Hargreeves doesn't exist anymore except for, possibly a picture in some history book. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I appreciate any feedback and constructive criticism or corrections, thank you <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly shorter chapter, sorry.

He'll come to relive that night over and over again. That frozen state as people tripped over corpses to get off the train they'd been stuck inside of for days, that mind numbing disbelief as he laid his eyes onto Auschwitz, that limb seizing fear as he watched trucks drive away from him with the thorough belief that his death was minutes away, and the way the night blurred into commands that chipped away at the man that was Klaus Hargreeves. The night will replay like a broken record whenever he closes his eyes, and it'll replay whenever he hears a train barrel down its tracks, and when he hears a dog bark, and it'll replay when someone grabs his wrist and whenever a radio or speaker fizzes with static. The way he turned into a little ragdoll, complying when hands pulled him this way and that to stretch his skin, when his head was pushed down, chin to shaven chest, and the way he's never minded needles turned, quickly, to a dislike of them when a stranger branded him with a new name.

Not that he thinks he'll live long enough to be able to think back on this. 

They're registered. Klaus Hargreeves is dead and any mention of the name will kill the man he used to be. He walks in a line to the stables of stone bunk beds for them, and he hurries to get himself and Dave a top bunk. Dave crawls onto one and just before Klaus can, someone hurries forth and declares that it's his. Klaus feels something bubble up in his chest and he curls his hand around the stones. "I was here first," he states, something akin to possessiveness and urgency curling around his lungs. The man mutters something and ignores Klaus, going to clamber up. Opposite them, a man sits up, waving a hand.

"Hey," he calls, then clears his throat and repeats himself a little louder. "He was here first, don't push him away." The man lets his eyes linger on the other man who tried to steal the bunk, and Klaus wonders how long he's been here for. Nonetheless, the man tensely takes a step back, allowing for Klaus to take the last space beside Dave on the top bunk. It digs into the sharpness of his jutting bones and the cold of the stone seeps right into his marrow, and the way that he's pressed against Dave and other men until they can hardly move does nothing for it. 

"Thanks," he murmurs, flicking his gaze to the man opposite him. Klaus can imagine him being something of a lady's man, with dark eyes, a strong jaw and high cheekbones, remnants of brunette locks left in the short buzz on his head and broad shoulders, and he still has a warm smile. 

"It's only fair here," he says with a shrug. "Did you just get in?"

Klaus nods. "How long have you been here?" He asks. The man glances to the windows and purses his lips in thought. 

"A couple of weeks, I guess," he says. "I'm not entirely sure at this rate. I'm Antoni Wiśniewski." And, in the oddest display of normalcy Klaus witnesses in this place, he shuffles to the edge of his bunk and reaches a hand out. The action shocks Klaus, leaves him to blink at his hand before mentally kicking himself and shuffling forwards, reaching out and linking their hands.

"Klaus," he tells him. "Klaus Hargreeves." He shakes his hand and then retracts it, letting it fall to his stomach. 

"What do you do?"

Klaus tips his head to the side. "What?"

"What do you do, outside of here? Family? Job? Tell me about yourself."

Klaus swallows and his tongue dashes out along his dry lips. He struggles to grasp at memories, struggles to put his life into words. Does it matter now? It would be better for himself if he begun to distance himself from that old life, for at least then if he had nothing to lose, he might not fear death as much. But Antoni insists, and Dave's sat up, listening to them with a distant look in his eyes, and so Klaus swallows and finds the words.

"I... I've got a big family. We're all adopted. Two sisters and four brothers. They're... elsewhere. A different country."

"Do they know you're here?" Asks Antoni. Klaus looks down at his hands.

"No," he says with a shake of his head. "They don't know I'm here." He waves his hands. "This country or _here._"

"You ought to try a letter," Antoni says. "Write to them. Even if it's just for peace of mind."

Klaus snorts at the idea. He doesn't trust the soldiers here to get a letter out of the camp, and even if he did, is he supposed to ask that they keep the letter safe until 2019? Or is he supposed to hope Reginald, of all people, will be living in the Academy before it's even created and will somehow put a stop to it before he can even come here? There's no point other than piece of mind, or for keeping a journal. 

"Maybe," he utters dismissively. He knows he won't. "I... I do art," he lies, because he might as well continue using that as his profession. Antoni hums in acknowledgement. He glances up. "You?"

Antoni shrugs half heartedly. "Office job," he says casually. "Nothing exciting. I've got siblings too - not as many as you, evidently, but I have a younger sister. Her name's Maja." A smile graces his features, then, something fleeting and warm. He swallows and looks up, and his eyes find Dave. "Did you two come together?"

Dave looks at Klaus and nods. "From Berlin," he states. "With my sisters..." Dave trails off. "Amalie must have gotten on one of the trucks." Klaus looks at Antoni, catching his gaze, and there's a mutual glint of knowledge there. They were supposed to be the ones to be shot, and yet they were alive. There were only two paths waiting for Amalie had she gotten on the truck, and they were both death, simply varying in speed. But Antoni looks back at Dave and nods.

"She must have," he confirms. Dave looks away and he looks distant, eyes not focusing quite on anything, and then he lowers himself to lay on the unforgiving stone beneath him. Klaus sighs, his shoulders slumping. He looks at Antoni and, for a minute, he says nothing. He thinks that the lingering eye contact is word enough, a conversation played out in silence, words hanging in the air between them, and then Klaus lays down. 

Klaus lays there and tries to ignore the way Dave shakes as he mourns his sisters, as if the emotions have finally caught up to him now, and he tries not to listen to the other people that sniffle and cry. He stares up at the ceiling and he thinks about everything from his history lessons. If he's not dead now, it could happen any day, any minute from now. If he says the wrong thing, doesn't work hard enough, works himself to death, if he's picked at random to be picked apart by doctors, or if he's simply picked at random. If it'll be painful or if it'll be fast. He wonders if the photos taken of him only earlier have lived and if his siblings will ever see them, if they'll believe it's him. He wonders what will happen to the pictures of his hands, too, for the officer was thoroughly fascinated or amused by those tattoos. 

He wonders about his life until and how quickly it'll be taken away from him until he closes his eyes.

If he had expected to sleep long, he was sorely mistaken. The sun has hardly risen and when they're woken by a pounding gong and told to clean where they sleep, and Klaus feels exhaustion nestle into his limbs. Lack of food keeps him heavy and slow, but fear keeps him from being the slowest. He loses Dave again the mess to use the bathroom under the watchful eye of officers and of hundreds of strangers, and he uses cold water to wash his face and chase away the cotton in his skull. He jumps and averts his gaze when someone, an officer, yells at a man who's clearly been here for longer than Klaus and who takes too long, apparently, and tries not to watch when a rifle clubs his head and he wheezes on the floor, too weak to get back up. 

A gong goes again and Klaus abandons the stale bread he had begun to eat, and it begins to rain when they line up. He sees Dave further down the line, eyes red-rimmed and jaw locked, drops of water running down his prominent cheekbones. He catches Klaus' eye, once, and Klaus looks away first. Guilt eats away at him as if he was the reason Dave is here now, or of guilt of knowing that, a week ago, Klaus had no idea who Dave, by then long dead, was. 

It rains and soaks through their clothes, and the role call goes on. There's a thud behind him as someone collapses, and an officer yells at them, demands them stand up, threatens him with words Klaus is grateful he doesn't understand, and then he makes the man's ribs crack beneath his foot. Klaus doesn't look. He eyes the fences some distance in front of him and blinks rain from his eyes. He shakes so violently his teeth chatter and he curls his hands into fists to try and feel his fingertips. 

Someone's missing. Someone's not where they're supposed to be and the officers bellow, pace up and down the lines and Klaus makes the mistake of looking one in the eyes as he walks past him; a tall man, inches above Klaus, his head held higher to look down his nose at him. _Where is he? _He demands of Klaus. _Do you know where he is? Where is he?_

It's not really a question, not with the way he demands it from Klaus. It's a statement that forces Klaus to admit he doesn't know where the missing man is, for he doesn't even know who's missing, but it's excuse enough for the man to lift the butt of his rifle and hit Klaus with it. With the second hit, he falls to the mud, clutching his nose and trying to remember how to say sorry, sorry for doing nothing, sorry for them deeming his existence a crime. A boot in his stomach forces him onto his back and he faces the barrel of a rifle and told to get up, to get up right now, to not lie like he is. He gets to his knees and is pushed over again, and the rifle barrel hits his head like a mocking poke, and _what's the harm in one more night? _He knows that he can't get out, knows that he will die, but he just hadn't expected it to be so quickly. 

A sickly man yells. It snaps the officer's to attention and gives Klaus time to find his feet and bite his tongue as the officer beats him into the mud. Klaus screws his eyes shut and looks away, pinching his nose until it stops bleeding, and he tries to ignore the way the man coughs around thick blood that swells around in his throat and tricks down from the corner of his lips, staining the ground beneath him. He curls his hands into his clothes and hardly moves on the floor, and they stand there in the rain as he wheezes, and as the officers shout. Someone cries. The blood on his hands drips from his fingertips and melts into the mud. The rain gets heavier and the role call goes on and on and on until his skin is pink and he can't stop shaking and his breathing's sharp and shallow.

It's only until they finally find out what happened to the missing man - he died, Klaus realises, early this morning - and longer still do they call the role call to a close and people are split into groups, marching in the rain. Klaus tries to ignore the way the uniform clings to his body with the rain, the way the wooden shoes on his feet crush his toes together uncomfortably, and he keeps walking so that he's not at the end.

He reaches Dave's side. Dave spares him a glance, his head tilted down slightly against the rain. "I thought they were going to shoot you," he murmurs quietly. Klaus wipes his fingertips along the bottom of his nose, still throbbing painfully, bursts of pain drumming from his nose up behind his eyes. 

"That's because he was," Klaus replies, and he swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. If not for the man they left behind, Klaus knows that he would be dead right now. The realisation startles him and he has to dig his nails into his arms and remind himself to keep walking. He almost just died. Would he have been doomed to be a ghost to haunt this place forever, watch as people came and died, as it was destroyed and liberated, as people mourned what happened, and he'd relive the birth of his siblings - and himself? - and his siblings would never know what happened to him, or how he's still a ghost, lost and confused or full of anger. 

He feels sick, and not because of the unforgiving rain, the poor sleep and the lack of food. 

He keeps walking. He can tell who's been there longer than they have. They're skinnier, paler, their cheeks hollow and their knees shaky, and they get on with things without uttering a single sound, without looking at someone else, and they keep their gaze down and don't look at anyone. They look like they might keel over and die at any moment. They walk and the rain doesn't lessen. They walk past the building in which a razor chipped away at Klaus and an ink-soaked needle tainted him, and they walk further towards a large ditch. They get split off, some people being pointed down into the ditch to pick a shovel or a pickaxe up into their hands and begin to chip away at the ground with mud and water rising to their knees, and others walk further still. Dave is pointed down to work in one of the ditches and Klaus is separated once more, left to trudge in the line and to be packed like sardines into another truck with no idea of where he's going. It makes him tense, as well as everyone else in the truck, but at least it offers some shelter from the rain.

It's a short drive, ending on a bumpy road that jostles everyone in the truck. It slows to a halt and they're ushered out once more, and again they're split even further, some pointed towards the foundations of a growing building, and the others to the doors of a coal mine. Klaus follows a line down into the mine, and it gets darker and colder, the air thick and stifling and damp, doing nothing to help the way he shivers, still, feeling just as wet as he might if he walked beneath the flow of a waterfall.

_Extract coal, _they're ordered. He doesn't know for how long, doesn't really know how to do that, either, but he pretends until he's watched people for long enough to get to work. He takes coal in heavy loads by hand, because any other means of transport rather than his own person is a luxury they're not allowed, and at least it goes to hide the sickly colour of his frozen skin, hidden beneath a layer of pitch black dust and dirt, his hands covered in it, his arms streaked, his chest and his back blotted like a growing disease.

He works. He traverses up and down winding, narrow staircases, up and down steep inclines that make his thighs burn. He carries enough coal that he thinks his arms might just stop functioning completely. People yell at him. A lot of people yell at him, actually, and he doesn't know what else to say other than to duck his head and utter _entschuldigung, entschuldigung, entschuldigung. _It's cold, and he trudges through growing puddles of frigid water, and nothing his fingers feel numb if he focuses on them for too long. Someone passes out. Their body falls behind him and down the staircase until it hits the corner, head whacking off the stairs, and Klaus is the one to carry both the man _(body?) _and the coal the man was carrying out of the mine together. He barely just manages to avert a panic attack, because the clothes clinging to him and the dampness is suffocating, and he's exhausted and sees spots each time he lays his weary eyes on the staircase to go back up them and someone hits him for the sake of hitting him and he feels like his bones are going to be ground into dust and he's far from home and the people that look at him see only a slave to be alive for a few more weeks, if he's lucky. 

He forces himself to stay composed simply because he doesn't want to know what will happen to him if he doesn't. He keeps working. Blinks back taunting black dots. Starts slacking towards the end. Lunch is brought to them at some point, and Klaus remembers walking in here in the dark of early morning. He devours the meager food and his stomach asks for more, but he's back at work as soon as he's done. Klaus _detests_ stairs. He keeps his mouth shut and works. 

They're lead out in rows, once more stuffed into a truck. There's less people in there than when they arrived, and the people in there are shaking from cold, hands covered in dirt and blisters, or their faces dark with coal, eyes squinting against the rays of the setting sun. He falls asleep on the truck, a blessed relief from the fire in his muscles, and someone shakes him awake as the truck slows to a halt once more. He stumbles out of the truck in time for their dinner rations and time to uselessly scrub at the dirt caked onto his skin with dirty water. It hardly works. The water grows dark with coal beneath him, liquid night spilling off his skin, and it stays on his hands and his arms. And then there's roll-call again. Bodies curl up like ragdolls on the floor to be marked as dead and then more prisoners are sent to carry them away, and there's yelling that goes over Klaus' head, and more fists are thrown at unsuspecting people. Klaus focuses his energy on standing upright. He's never felt exhaustion so bone deep like he does now, so mind consuming and threatening, something promising to be so sweet and blissful, but he knows that should he fall asleep now, he won't open his eyes again. So he stands. And he stands, and he stands, and he stands, and he stands.

The sky's dark overhead by the time it finishes, and there's more bodies to be taken away than when it started, exhaustion stealing more lives. The smell of burning stays strong in the air, and Klaus knows what it is. 

It feels real, now. Coming off the train was like a fever dream, something he expected to wake up from at any given moment. While he might have known he stood there, and it was all very real, it held no consequence to him for he just needed a minute alone, a minute to open the briefcase and be gone and be safe. But the briefcase was long gone, and the cuts on his hands and the throbbing in his nose and pain in his stomach proved very much that this was as real as ever, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The roll-call ends and they disperse for the rest of the evening. People head to the washrooms in hope to try and clean themselves and some people linger outside, and Klaus drags his aching feet towards the old stables that had been transformed to cram them all in. He watches it waver in sight and he can see skeletons moving inside, with rags hanging off their bones and their cold eyes never staying in one place for too long. He falls, his knees groaning something fierce, and he tumbles onto his back to watch smoke curl heavenwards into the sky. He doesn't know where ghosts go if they pass on, but he knows a lot of them are still stuck within the fences around him, trapped to mourn and trapped in fear for eternity. He wonders if, when he dies, he'll be able to leave. He was never sure about that.

But he's not dying, he tells himself. He's not dying, he's just exhausted. He just needs to sleep. 

A figure looms over him, smartly dressed and too clean to be any sort of prisoner, and no prisoner has a rifle, either. It's an older officer, staring down at him, and Klaus eyes the rifle in favour of him. Maybe it was a smarter move to die now. He knows he's replaceable here, but at least he would know they didn't get the satisfaction of working him to death. Could that be counted as a win?

But the man does not touch his gun. He crouches instead, wraps an arm around Klaus' arm and hauls him upwards, and he says _move. Go, now, to your bed, but anyone else will kill you out here. _He makes Klaus find his feet once more, keeps his hand around his arm and walks him up to the stables and nudges him inside and leaves him. Klaus stumbles over his own feet and eyes the stone slabs until he's sure of which one is his, and there's another hand around him. Antoni, with dark bags beneath his eyes, splays a hand across his back and towards Dave's hand, leaning over the edge of their bed, and he's pushed and pulled up onto it. He groans as he lays down, briefly catching sight of Dave before he closes his eyes. Dave looks pale, too, and tired. So tired. 

"Where did you go?" Dave asks him, voice drifting down towards him, and Klaus exhales slowly. 

"Coal mine," he utters. He folds his arms around himself, curling his hands in his clothes that only now begin to feel slightly dry, and tries to find warmth again. "Someone died," he blurts before he can stop himself. He doesn't know the man, but he can still feel his weight in his arms, and see his hollowed face, and knew he was carrying someone's father, someone's brother, their son, their husband, their friend. 

"I'm sorry," offers Dave. Klaus doesn't respond. He finds he's too tired to. He listens to the drone of other people, hears Antoni and Dave talk, and Klaus lets it wash over him and finds that while the stone beneath him isn't comfortable, he falls asleep quickly on it. 

He dreams of Five. Five and his stupid apocalypse, and he wonders what Five actually meant by that. Part of him wishes he had listened to him, heard him out, and he hopes that they manage to avert it even if he won't be there. He wonders, too, what Ben will do. Klaus was the only one he could talk to. He must be worried, he thinks. Maybe it's been weeks since he left, or days, or months. He isn't sure how time travel works. But he lets himself wonder and he thinks of a brilliant, dazzling, devouring blue. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <3


	5. Chapter 5

He sleeps through the night like a log. Despite the hardness beneath him and the way the stone saps all the warmth right out of his bones, Klaus falls asleep on it as if it was the most luxurious bed in existence. He'll trudge back through the camp after work - sometimes later than usual, for sometimes they keep him in the mines from the dark of early more to the dark of sunset, or they'll bring him back to camp in time for their meagre dinner rations and then point him in a new direction where he'll stay nearly until their curfew - and he'll haul himself towards the stables with heavy feet, occasionally accompanied by a hand on his body that shoves him forth, and he'll trudge inside. Sometimes, if other people are willing and able, they'll help pull or push him up onto his bunk if he's too worn to do it himself, and he'll hardly have been laying there for more than five seconds before he's asleep. He'll pack himself in behind Dave, and sometimes someone will curl behind him, all tightly pressed against one another. 

Sometimes, though, they don't fall asleep so quickly. On the occasions that neither of them immediately collapse into their bed, they'll stay up until the curfew and they'll talk. They dance around sensitive topics. Family is rarely brought up on and is always fleeting, and it's always memories they speak of, further ones, childhood memories. Not recent ones. Klaus knows the sudden passing of Louise and the disappearance of Amalie is something Dave isn't coping well with, even if he insists that he is. Klaus doesn't go into detail of his own family, but he misses them with a burning ferocity. Oh, what he would give to see them all again; to see Luther's scathing looks, Diego's hot-headed temper, and Five's irritated little sighs, to hear Allison question his fashion and hear Vanya's violin, even just once more. One last time. He'd give anything to hear them call him a junkie, anything for those brotherly conversations he has with Diego, the exasperated tight-lipped look when Klaus annoys Five. He plays little moments like that from the few days they had all been together again over and over and over again in his head. Dreams of them, too. Sometimes he feels the leather of Diego's car beneath him rather than dirt and stone. 

He hates himself a lot of the time, too. Especially for taking his life for granted, for taking his horrific mess of a family for granted, too. For not savouring the nights they all snuck out and ran to Griddy's to eat themselves sick when they were ten, for not memorising each time Allison painted his nails, each time Five bounced equations off him and each time Luther stood up for them, for not prolonging his and Diego's conversations every time they met up after they left the Academy and for not going to more of Vanya's concerts and for not listening to Ben more, too. He misses Ben horrifically. His presence feels like a void after having him glued to his side for so long, and he misses him as that unwavering presence, misses desperately the comfort he offered. 

He wonders, as days pass, how long it is for them. If it's longer or shorter. If a day here passes as three there, or if it passes as three minutes. For some reason, the idea of time here being longer scares him. The idea that in a handful of hours, Klaus has been worked to death for weeks. His family wouldn't have time to notice he's gone before he's been dead for months. And the idea of them finding out after he's died and trying to save him, somehow, Five jumping back into a time before Klaus has died and forcing him to live again, averting his path from a blissful peace and forcing him to deal with the possibility of life after all of this; it's something he isn't sure he wants.

When they don't talk about family, they talk about other things. Meaningless things, things to fill the void and to try and make them feel human again. Dave tells him about the stars. Klaus tells him about music that hasn't been invented yet. Dave tells him about his favourite books and describes their plots and their characters, and Klaus tells him about movies that haven't been invented yet. They talk about aspirations and Klaus admits that his life never really had a path. He had done drugs and, as years passed, he always assumed that it would just... work itself out. At eighteen he had assumed that, surely by twenty-five, as an adult, everything would be fine. But he was verging on thirty and frequented clubs he had when he was twenty and had no plans to stop. 

It was funny, then, that only cruel cosmic intervention, for surely that must be what had done this to him, averted his path. Instead of dying from drugs he would die from starvation or exhaustion or beatings or murder. And, not only that, but no one would know. Yet another person who had no family, whose name would be lost, who had nothing to be remembered by. 

His dreams are weird. Sometimes he sleeps too heavily to really have or remember them. He dreams of his family, sometimes. Most of the time now, actually. Imagines walking in through the Academy and they're all gathered in the living room and Five is rambling on about apocalypse-this and apocalypse-that, and someone calls him a junkie and he laughs, and proceeds to steal something to sell later on, and life continues like it always has. He dreams about this place, too. He dreams about in in such a way that he's simply standing, rooted to the spot like a statue, watching time pass. He watches people come in, watches them work, watches them die. Watches families get torn apart. Watches chaos ensue as years pass and thousands of people are brought out the camp and sent on marches, and records are destroyed, buildings exploded, all in attempt to hide the crimes done, and only a handful of thousands of people are ever actually rescued. He watches years pass, watches a memorial be built, watches people mourn grandparents and great-grandparents, further relatives. Klaus remains a ghost among over a million, unseen, unknown of, and people pass by him. He stands in a line composed of hundreds of thousands of ghosts, all rooted to the spot, all dressed in loose rags, all watching with dead eyes as people learn and people mourn. 

Sometimes he thinks those dreams are reality, and when he wakes up and is alive, that those are the dreams. 

Sleeping on stone becomes the least of his worries, but in time he'll come to realise that he can't sleep without the feel of someone pressed against his chest or his back, of cold bones against cold bones, and of something hard and painful and cold beneath him. Not for long periods of time, anyway. It would come to feel odd feeling duvets against his skin, and to have fitting clothes, and to run his fingers down his side and not be able to grasp at his hip and dance his fingertips along the bridge of each of his ribs, feeling how they move with each breath. Not that he thinks such a time will come. 

He sees some people that retain their dignity for far longer than he does, and he isn't quite sure how or why. Perhaps it's the fact that he knows the chances of survival in a statistical sense, that he's seen this place in tear-jerking books, breath-stealing stories, and never for something good. But he sees one man, one day, after his work in the coal mines. It's left him shaking and cold and covered in dust that he scrubs half heartedly at before he simply stares at his murky reflection. 

A man beside him spares him a glance, then holds out a bar of soap. Klaus shakes his head. "You ought to keep yourself clean," says the man. Klaus feels something inside of him twist.

"Why?" He asks. "I'll be no different tomorrow by lunch. The water's just as dirty. There's no point."

"There is a point," the man tells him. Klaus wants to tell him it won't matter because it's not as if they'll have an open casket funeral in which his corpse needs to look presentable. He'll be just as dirty tomorrow, just as dirty when he dies, hardly much cleaner by curfew. But he lets the man talk, though. "You're still human. You get up every morning and you eat what breakfast you have. It'll do you no good to treat yourself as if you aren't." He holds the soap out again, eyebrows raised, and then he takes Klaus' hand, puts the bar of soap in it, and gestures for him to use it. He isn't sure how he can hold such a mentality when more people died in front of them. After returning the soap to him and leaving, a fraction cleaner than he had come in, he never saw the man again and didn't dare wonder what might have happened to him.

He feels the meat on his bones melt off. He watches Dave's cheeks fall in a bit, concave, feels more sharp bones when they sleep. The clothes feel loser on him. Falls hurt more, and he wiggles his fingers and watches his skin ripple over his bones. On the times that he doesn't fall asleep instantly, he finds that comfort is no more than a distant memory. His hips ache, fierce pain that follows him from night and makes work even worse, and it doesn't go by night. His tailbone becomes a picture of mottled bruises spanning across his hips and his ribs, and he runs his fingers over them, prodding and probing and distantly curious. Someone used to tell him, during his peak use of heroin, that should he lose any more weight, he'd be a walking skeleton. He thinks that he weighed more then than he does now. He thinks that the alleyways he used to sleep in were more comfortable than here. 

Out of everything, though, he thinks that it's roll-call that rapidly becomes his least favourite moments of each day. Every morning and every evening they go through it, standing outside no matter the weather, and they drag it out for hours. It's worse in the evening when he's tired right down to the marrow in his bones and his entire body burns from hours of labour and, truthfully, he isn't sure how he keeps standing for it. Wind whips them viciously, rain freezes them, and he often can't feel his feet by the end of it all. People get beaten. People collapse. People get flogged. Many, many people die. 

He remembers, also, the first escape attempt - the first one in his time there, anyway. It goes largely unsuccessful. He isn't actually sure if a single person got to safety, but it doesn't matter because everyone caught was marched right back into camp - the ones that hadn't been shot while running away, anyway - and they're hung in front of everyone. The images stay burned into Klaus' eyelids, and the weight of the bodies he had been forced to help take back to the crematoria still exists in his trembling arms. A large amount of the people that didn't try to escape but that were from the same block as those who had tried were also shot. He isn't sure how many people died in that single day, but Klaus knows that it's over a hundred. More likely over two hundred. And for the following couple of weeks, they get even stricter - if a person even so much as looks suspicious, and he means looks suspicious in the way that the guards use and not in the literal meaning, then they're flogged.

For the things that Klaus doesn't experience - or, as far as he's concerned, not yet - he sees it happen to other people. He sees a Polish man be flogged and when he can't count in German, because his German is probably at the same level of Klaus', he dies. He counts to twelve and isn't sure what's after that, so they start again. They reach twelve and still he doesn't know what thirteen is, so they start again, and they start again, and they start again. 

Klaus has never been religious. Reginald was strictly against such ideas, and they were hardly taught about religion, either. But he prays that there's a Heaven and that, in time, all the ghosts, the hundreds, the thousands of ghosts that he sees all find their way there.

He does see the ghosts. He's never entirely sure who is or isn't alive, still, but the main indicator is the fact that the ghosts never move. Unlike the ones Klaus is used to, these ones stay rooted in their spot. They wear features of confusion, looking entirely lost, uncomprehending of the fact that they're dead, and they remain rooted and like spectators. He isn't sure if the ghosts look like living people or if the living people look like ghosts. He recognises some of them. He recognises Antoni, whom had been missing from the barrack's for two days before Klaus spotted his ghost sitting just outside of it. They make eye contact and Antoni startles slightly, asking _can you see me? _and Klaus keeps walking.

Despite the avoidance of their families, Klaus brings his own up one night, an intermediate amount of time later.

"My family's odd," he mutters. Dave, who's still clearly awake behind him, sharp hips digging into Klaus' back, twitches slightly.

"Yeah?"

Klaus nods. "If I told you the truth about me, you wouldn't believe me."

Dave lets out a little laugh. "I might," he says. 

"You wouldn't."

"Try me."

Klaus, with great effort, turns to face Dave. "My legal name is Number Four," he begins. Dave quirks an eyebrow, face showing that he clearly didn't expect that. "My siblings and I are all numbers. Number One to Seven. We were only given real names to make us fit in with the society norms, but he never once called us them. I was born in nineteen-eighty-nine."

Dave snorts at that. "It's not even the eighties yet, Klaus."

"Exactly," says Klaus. "I was born on October the first, nineteen-eighty-nine. Me and my siblings were bought by Reginald, my dad, because we all have powers."

Dave tips his head to the side. "Like what?"

"Luther, Number One, is... huge. You could drop a building on him and he'd get up. At eight years old, he was deadlifting all of us at once, sitting across a bar. Diego, Number Two, he can throw a knife around a corner and it'll hit exactly where he wants it to hit. The knives'll do a full ninety-degree angle. He can hold his breath for, like, ever, too. Allison, she can make you do whatever you want just by telling you to do it. She could tell you to never speak to her again and it'd be impossible. She could tell you to shoot yourself and you would." He rambles, words spilling off his tongue like biting acid, his eyes a little distant as he thinks of each sibling. "Five - he never got a real name - he can teleport. He can time travel, too, but badly. He tried to when we were, like, thirteen, and went missing for years. Only just came back recently, in twenty-nineteen, and he still looks thirteen. Ben..." He swallows. "Ben had monsters inside of him. He hated them. I don't know if they were inside of him, or if he was, like, some kind of human portal to another realm, but he hated them. He's... he died. I think he could tell he was going to die, before it happened." His tongue dashes out across his lips. "Vanya... she's the only one of us that can't do anything. She's Number Seven."

Dave blinks, staring at Klaus as if he's some kind of madman, and he sounds like one, he knows. But then Dave swallows and asks, "what's your power, then? What can you do?"

Klaus glances away. "I... uh, I see dead people. Ghosts. I see ghosts."

Dave stares at him. "See a lot here?"

Klaus closes his eyes and nods. "Thousands. They... they don't move. They stand there, outside, or in the mines, everywhere, and they all look lost."

Dave looks like he's bursting with questions. He picks through them, and Klaus can almost see him deciding his next one. "Say this is real," he says, "why are you here? Instead of in the two-thousands? Why here?"

Klaus lets out a little laugh. "It'll sound even worse."

Dave waves him on.

"My brother, Five - the one that can time travel - he just came back. We thought he was dead - I didn't, I never saw him - but he came back. Said... something was going to happen in the near future, something big. He wanted to change it. So these, like, time travelling assassins were hunting him down, to try and stop him from changing the timeline, yeah? And they broke into our house, and they kidnapped me. Tortured me to try and figure out where he was. I got out, and I escaped through a vent. That... that briefcase I had - it was a time machine. The one they used. I thought it might have money in it. I opened it and... next thing I know, I'm in your bookshop."

It takes Dave several moments to respond. He doesn't look entirely convinced. "If you're from the future," he begins, "what happens here?"

Klaus looks away. He takes a breath. "What do you mean?"

"In the two-thousands, say, what happens to this place?"

Klaus bites his lips and thinks back to his history lessons. "In a couple of years, the war will stop, and people will come to open the camps. Get everyone out." He pauses. Dave doesn't say anything. "There'll only be a few thousand left here, though. They'll try and kill everyone in here before it. They'll blow the buildings up and get rid of the records, and they'll march prisoners out until they die and they'll shoot them. But people come, and people live and people get out of here. By two-thousand... everyone remembers this. Schools teach it. Historians study it. People come to mourn old relatives here, or to learn about what happened. No one forgets about it."

Dave looks upwards, staring past the ceiling as if it's made of glass. "How many people die here?" He suddenly asks. Klaus stares at him, and he struggles to find a number.

"I... I'm not sure. It's..." He swallows and looks at the sleeping corpses around him. "Over a million, I think."

"Did you know about me? In some history book, then? News article?" It sounds almost bitter. 

Klaus closes his eyes. "No," he admits apologetically. "I didn't. I never knew you or your family existed."

Dave's chest rises and falls. He doesn't speak and Klaus wonders if he's fallen asleep. "Tell me about your family," he requests. 

"What about them?"

Dave glances at him. "What's it like? Living with powers, I guess."

"Do you believe me?" 

Dave shrugs. "I don't see why I shouldn't."

Klaus' lips twitch oddly, and he looks upwards, too, and he begins to talk. "It's not as cool as you might think. My dad wanted us to be like child soldiers. By twenty, only Luther still lived with him, because Reginald made sure that he was Number One and the best, and more important, more loved. He tried to separate us from one another, I think. Didn't want us to be ourselves. He hated Diego's stutter because it was an inconvenience for himself. He thought Allison was greedy and selfish. She was, when she was younger, but he thought it with such disdain. Used Five's disappearance as a lesson - he hung up a portrait of him in a way that one might to remember a passed loved one, but no, not like that. He did it as a warning, I think. _Five disobeyed me and look what happened. He only exists in this painting now, and so will you if you don't do what I tell you to_." He let out a sad laugh at that, hands curling into fists. 

"Tried to erase Vanya from every record of the Academy, since she doesn't have powers. She's not in any family portraits, never came on missions, never got tattooed-"

"Missions? Tattoos?"

Klaus lifts his arm. "He tattooed us all when we were, like, ten, or eight, or something. I can't remember when. I might have blocked it out. But yeah, he tattooed us all. Like his own little logo, or something. His own branding. And he sent us on missions to stop robbers and gangs and shit like that." He shrugged, dropping his arm. "Oh, he hated me. Called me his biggest disappointment." He curls his hand back into a tight fist and his lips curl upwards into a hateful mockery of a smile.

"Why?" Asks Dave.

"I never did what he said," shrugs Klaus. "I hated - hate - the ghosts. Didn't want anything to do with them. Didn't want to use my powers, always refused to do it. He used to..." His throat closes up, and he imagines dark, small spaces, and screaming. So much screaming. "He tried to get me over it, but I never did. Never used my powers. Found a way to make the ghosts disappear and kept doing it. Left young." He laughs a little again, a hollow sound. "He hated it."

Dave peers at him. "I'm sorry," he offers. Klaus shrugs, and he turns back onto his side, closing his eyes.

"He's dead now, and I haven't seen him, so I'm fine," he says. Dave's hand weighs gently on his side, suddenly, and Klaus stills beneath the touch before relaxing.

"Tell me about the future."

Klaus does.

He's never quite sure whether or not Dave believes him, but he supposes it doesn't matter. In the end it becomes an escape for them. They'll wake up, march into Hell, get the day over with and, still miraculously alive, they find one another in the barracks again and when they can't sleep, they think about the future. 

One cold morning, they stand in roll-call, side by side. It's not raining nor windy, but Klaus slept fitfully last night and he wonders if today will be the day that he can't keep going. He feels bad for leaving Dave. He feels like an utter monster for leaving Dave. Especially as an officer comes up to him, and he wonders if he won't even make it to breakfast. He hopes Dave doesn't have to be the one to carry his corpse to the crematoria. But, instead of death, the officer only brings to him a question. He asks him his profession again. Klaus utters the one he had given a lifetime ago. _He's an artist_, he tells him. The officer scribbles something down, then, after roll-call, he brings Klaus aside. Klaus has never felt so terrified. But he forces his legs to walk beside the officer, to not stumble too much and to certainly not fall over. They keep walking until they get to a truck with a handful of other prisoners, and the officer sits next to him in the back rather than in the front. No one says a word for the entire drive.

It's not a long drive. They go directly from one place to the other, passing under an infamous sign, and when the truck stops, he and the officer go one way and the other prisoners go the other way. They go into a red-bricked building, up a set of stairs that steal his breath, and into an office. Behind a desk sits another officer. Klaus thinks he's seen his face in black and white before.

The officers talk in words that are said too quickly for Klaus to catch. He's gestured to sit in a seat and he wonders if it's a trap, but he's not shot when he does sit down. The officer across from him asks him something. _Can you draw?_

Klaus understands the words, but he can't find it in him to respond. He stares at the officer like an idiot, jaw slightly slack. The two officers share a glance and ask him the question again, and then discuss whether or not he actually speaks German at all. _He spoke earlier, _says the younger officer. The other one clicks his fingers in his face. 

_"What's your name?"_

Klaus opens his mouth. He almost says it. He almost tells them his name like a suicidal fool, and he struggles to steal the word from the tip of his tongue before it can be spoken. Instead, he says, _"143,627." _They took his real name away. 

The officers look a mix of amused and irritated. 

_"Your birth name, you fool."_

"Klaus," he says. 

_"You said you're an artist, Klaus."_

He hates the way his name sounds on his tongue. Klaus nods. The man slides a piece of blank paper and a pen in front of him and nods. _"Show me."_

Klaus picks the pen up in a shaking hand. He looks at the paper, swallows dryly. His mind blanks for a moment, but eventually he moves his hand and finds himself drawing Ben. Ben used to like his art. He'd draw in rehab a lot to occupy himself, and Ben always told him he should try and get clean and go to art school or something. 

The officer holds up a hand later and Klaus sits the pen down and sits back. They turn the paper, eye his drawing.

_"Who is this?"_

_"My brother," _says Klaus. The officer quirks an eyebrow, then shrugs, sets the paper down, and nods.

_"Can you paint?"_

Klaus nods. The officer muses over his thoughts for a moment, and then turns to the officer who had accompanied him. He catches words like _work_ and _dinner_ and _return_, and then they're leaving the office again, climbing into a truck, and returning to the camp he had come from.

He wants a portrait of his children, Klaus realises later that day. He's sent to work and not in the coal mines or in construction, but rather in taking people's luggage as they stumble off the train and bringing them to the Kanada warehouses. It doesn't make him see stars like the harder jobs do, and he can sit down on his knees as he sorts through other people's valuable like a thief. After dinner, he doesn't have the mess of evening roll-call, either. He's marked and then whisked off before he has to stand for hours, and brought somewhere else. Somewhere where he's sat in front of an easel with a canvas, some standard brushes, and some paints. The officer from earlier is there, and his kids with rosy cheeks and warm clothes stand together, and he's told to paint. It's possibly one of the most stressful situations he finds himself in, for he doesn't want to even consider what might be done to him if he doesn't make the children look like angels. They don't seem to question why there's a skeleton painting them, and the sight of children, for some reason, makes Klaus incredibly sad. He doesn't want to imagine these kids growing up with his face in their distant memory, or to see an old portrait of them hanging up, and to realise that their father was part of the people that killed him. He doesn't want to imagine people living an ordinary life and having him, looking how he surely must look, thrust into their nice day and ruining it.

So he tries not to let his eyes linger and he paints and hopes it's good enough. A woman - the man's wife, Klaus realises - gives him water, tutting about skin and bones, and he realises that she doesn't know. She knows he's a prisoner of an extension of the camp her spouse works in, and that's it. She brings back food, setting it on the table that holds his drinking water and his paints, and Klaus' stomach aches so fiercely._ It's a trap_, he screams at himself, and his eyes sting, and the woman eyes him. He wonders if she sees the fear and the pain and the tears in his eyes. Klaus seeks out the officer. His eyes flit to him almost desperately, seeking permission or rejection.

_"He speaks little German," _says the officer to his wife. And then he glances to Klaus, waves his hand in a vague gesture and in slow English, enunciated in a way that implies Klaus is stupid for not understanding, he says, "eat." 

Klaus wonders what lies the man will tell his wife of him. If she'll question why Klaus is so skinny and shaking, and he'll tell her it's because he only just came from a terrible place and the camp is safer for him, and he'll be better soon. Klaus feels more sorry for the wife than he feels for himself. He picks at the food hesitantly, as if he's careful to try and taste poison in it, and he utters _danke schön, danke schön, danke schön, danke schön _like a chorus from a prayer. He feels the need to thank her not only for his own safety, but because the food is simply leagues above what he's gotten used to, and her presence reminds him of Grace. For a while he has clean water to drink, warm food, and he's in a warm, well lit house. 

When it's done he sets the brush down and rises uncertainly to his feet, seeking out the father standing aside, and he nods. The man comes close and Klaus wonders if his shirt covers a gun that sits comfortably on his hip. The man comes close, eyes the painting, and Klaus holds his breath. He can't feel his hands. His heart roars beneath his skin. He wonders if it'll stutter to a violent stop and he'll just keel over from anxiety on the spot. But the man seems to approve, and the woman smiles widely, claiming it _amazing, wonderful, like a photograph_. They take the portrait and Klaus does his best to clean up, washing the paint off the brushes, lining the paints up, setting the dirty water aside, and then he's gone. In a truck and driving back to camp in time to go back into the barracks, still shaking and forcing himself to breathe slowly.

"Where did you go?" Dave asks as his bones settle on the stone.

"Painted an officer's children," he mumbles, wrapping his arms around himself. The change of scenery leaves him with a sense of whiplash, shaken him up perhaps more than the constant sight of bodies, because at least he's gotten used to that. Dave's head rests against his back, hand on his side, like some pitiful attempt to share either comfort or warmth or both. Klaus thinks about how quickly normal life seems to have left him, how quickly it disappeared, turned into nothing more than memories that feel a bit like a fever dream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading <3
> 
> No, this most likely would never happen in real life, but for the sake of the fic only.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dialogue in italics is being spoken in German, but just written in English for the sake of understanding it.

The first time it snows, Klaus feels nothing but dread.

The temperature had slowly been dropping, alternating between a heat that made him feel nauseous and cold nights that made him fear for his toes and his fingers. Nights got darker quicker and a tension fell across everyone. People coughed their lips wet and red, and the beds grew tighter, people pressing against one another in an attempt to find some scraps of heat. The fires in the barracks remain unlit, for the guards never give them the fuel to light them, and Klaus shivers hard enough that his teeth chatter against one another painfully. He develops a cough, too, something that nestles itself deep in his chest, winds itself around his ribs, and rattles in his throat with each breath. It's painful and each coughing fit leaves him tired and shaking, makes him see floating black dots in his vision. He finds that he has gaps in his memory, too. Moments in which he goes to work and then he's on the truck back with sore hands and sore feet, and he can't remember beginning to work, whether that's once more in the coal mines or in warehouses. 

The shoes they wear are no good in the snow. When they have breaks and when he returns to the barracks, he tries to rub some feeling back into his toes, and he wonders what would happen if he gets frostbite. One day, he has the utter misfortune of working outside. He's in a pit of freezing mud and water that soaks up his legs, and his arms shake with the cold and exertion, and then it begins to snow again and it doesn't stop. Whenever he slacks, someone's there to yell at him until he spurs his muscles on, and when he falls he has to find it in himself to claw his way back onto his feet. Someone eyes him with a knowing look when they break for lunch and he can hardly bring his food to his mouth. The sky melts into something inky and dark overhead, spitting little flakes of ice down upon them, and he doesn't feel when his legs take him back into the camp in the evening. He can't remember dinner, but he does remember Antoni. One of the few ghosts here that actually move, and he sits, cross-legged opposite Klaus. He says things, word of some comfort, and for a moment it's like he's Ben.

He can imagine Ben now. He would sit beside Klaus, or crouch down, and he'd insist on Klaus getting up, on moving somewhere better, or of calling someone. But there's nowhere safe to go, no one to call for help, nothing to do, and so he sits and he folds his arms around himself and coughs. 

The world spins at roll-call. It dances like one of those music box decorations without the music, a blur of spinning white snow and dark sky. He can hear someone begging distantly, although it sounds muffled when it reaches his ears, as does the sound of fists against bone. He remembers the snow at the Academy, remembers watching it twirl down from the Heavens from his window and, in the half an hour free time they used to get, he would race outside and barrel into the snow with no regard for himself or his clothes. He would make snow-angels and snowmen, and he tried to build igloos with Ben before Five would come and tell them that they were doing it all wrong and that it was horrifically structurally unsound. They would have snowball fights, sometimes. Diego was a cheater by default, because his snowballs went up and over the little snow mounds they had built to hide behind, or the snowballs would go around trees and, without fail, always hit them right in the face. Luther hated snowball fights, because he always ended up with the most snow in his hair. Five was a cheater, too, because he would appear, shove the snow down their shirts, and disappear. 

Reginald hated it, of course. They'd come back soaking and shivering, dragging snow in behind them, and they'd all get lectured, but it was so worth it. The bite of the snow is painful now, though, and burning. It seeps right into his bones without much resistance, for his clothes are loose and worn to dirty rags and he's no fat to fight the cold, either. It looks a bit like Star Wars at the moment, though, when all the space ships would go into hyperdrive, and the space would be pitch black with streaks of light stars rushing past, and that's what the snow and the sky looked like now, as it spins around him. It's fascinating, hypnotising. He uncurls his stiff fingers to cradle a snowflake in the palm of his hand. The _GOODBYE _scrawled across it looks like a hastily done message, and he can remember getting those tattoos, too. He had been too high to sit completely still, but he had specifically requested the most patient artist there, and he likes the way they look.

His legs disappear beneath him all at once, and, imitating a failed game of Jenga, Klaus collapses. He hits the snow like a doll cut free of its strings, and it's the first soft thing he's felt in what feels like lifetimes despite the way it burns his cheek. If he thinks hard enough, if he closes his eyes and concentrates, he can feel the bed of the Academy beneath him; its rich mattress that curves to accommodate him, its fluffy blankets. He can ignore the yelling, too, that suddenly encroaches his hearing. The angry, harsh yelling that makes Klaus' heart pound, for he's comfortable, and that's all that matters.

Hands tighten like shackles around his arms and he almost vomits when he's pulled so suddenly upright to face the world again, but all he does is moan his loss of comfort. He's in a line, a line of skeletons, and the two either side of him hold him upright. He catches the yelling, hears words of _standing_ and _falling_ and_ consequences for everyone_, and his head swings limply like a bobble-head when someone backhands him. He doesn't register the stinging in his cheek for several moments, but it does force him to blink his vision clear of onlooking ghosts and to focus on the soldier in front of him. Right. He's not at home, but far, far from it. And he made the foolish, murderous mistake of collapsing. He knows that if he falls, so might many other people. So he forces himself to lift his head ever so slightly, and to let the other two men hold him upright. And when roll-call finishes without another collapse, he's spun around to face the barracks, and he drags his feet towards it.

Dave catches up with him, somehow. He stumbles alongside Klaus and the other prisoners hauling Klaus onwards, and his mouth moves silently, a bit like a fish's. Klaus finds himself with Dave against his back and someone else against his chest when they crawl onto the beds, much less comfortable than the snow, as if in some meagre attempt to find warmth for him. Klaus thinks that it's stupid. He's like an icicle there, wet and hardly shivering anymore. They'd be warmer if they left Klaus on the floor. He's just sapping the warmth they need and throwing it away.

Dave shakes behind him. For some reason, Klaus doesn't think it's from the cold. Klaus wishes he could move his tongue to tell him it's alright, but the darkness that had followed him from breakfast seizes him. 

He doesn't think it's a dream, but it must be, because when he opens his eyes, he's not in some old, reformed stables. He's not cold, either. He's not in pain. He's not hungry. He's blessedly... fine. He's not hot, not cold. Not hungry, not full. He's a perfect medium, but a perfect medium feels like Heaven to him now. He lifts himself off the grass he's laying in almost reluctantly, because it's so comfortable, but he's curious. He's not in the camp, and he's not dreaming of the Academy, either. He isn't quite sure where he is, other than a field in which the grass is grey and the sky is, too, and the trees in the distance. Everything is monochrome, like a history textbook's pictures, and he rises to his feet. He feels more energetic than he thinks he ever has before. He feels happy.

He walks unhindered for a while, grass tickling his calves, the sun warm on his cheeks. He walks until he sees someone.

There's a girl having a picnic. The blanket she sits on is eye-catchingly blue, so bright and vibrant against everything else, and she clutches in her hands a glass of pink lemonade, in which a straw sticks out, resting between her lips. She blinks at him and he has the distinct feeling of thousands of eyes on him. Then the girl gestures for him to sit.

He crosses his legs opposite her. She has berries and fruit and little finger sandwiches with her on this picnic, and she waves her hand openly. "Help yourself," she says.

Gingerly, Klaus picks up one of the paper plates. He puts two finger sandwiches - cucumber - onto his plate, and follows it with a few raspberries and strawberries. He balances the plate in his lap and picks up one of the sandwiches, then begins to nibble on it. The girl picks out a glass from her picnic basket, followed by the bottle of pink lemonade, and she raises her eyebrows questioningly at Klaus.

"Please," he says, and is surprised that his throat doesn't feel so raspy or tight. The girl pours him a drink and hands it over. He sips it through a straw and closes his eyes at all the tastes that explode on his tongue and makes his mouth water for more and, with less hesitation, he eats.

"Do you know where you are?" The girl asks him. Klaus looks up from the third sandwich pinched between his fingers, then looks around. He smiles softly.

"Somewhere nice."

The girl quirks an eyebrow curiously. "Not many people would describe a black and white empty field as nice," she says. Klaus shrugs.

"It's pretty," he says. "Quiet. Peaceful. Warm. Gentle. _Nice_." He gives her an odd look. "Should I not want to be here?"

She shrugs. "Probably not, but given your situation, I'm not that surprised."

"Who are you?" He asks, and he fears the answer inexplicably, fears it in a way that he can't put into words.

"Who do you think I am?"

Klaus shrugs. He bites into a raspberry. "I'm inclined to think I'm dead, but I'm also agnostic, so..." He trails off and repeats his shrug.

"Then think of me as whatever you want," says the girl. She takes a sip of her lemonade.

"So I am dead, then?"

"Technically, yes."

"Oh." Klaus doesn't know how to respond to that. It's peaceful, though. Death seems nice. "Am I stuck here?"

The girl shrugs. "Depends. Right now, though, I thought I'd try my hand at being _nice_ and give you a break."

Klaus frowns at that. "What do you mean?"

"I could send you back immediately," she says. "But I've been watching everything, since you're marginally more important than any other ordinary human. I'll admit, I didn't expect to see you be one of the ones to try and mess with time, accidental or not. It's entertaining."

"_Entertaining_," echoes Klaus. "That - _that's_ your entertainment?" A blueberry bursts in the palm of his fist.

"Not _that_," says the girl dismissively. "But you, specifically. Where you ended up was just a chance of fate. Anyway, as I was saying, I decided I'd give you this break. Trying that nice thing, remember."

Klaus bites the inside of his cheek. It doesn't hurt. He reaches for his lemonade and takes a long sip of it, then sets it back down. "Don't send me back," he asks, his voice a quiet, small thing. The girl gives him a look. "Please," he insists. "I don't - I don't want to go back. Please." His hands shake at the idea and he hangs his head, shaking it. "I can't. I can't do it. I can't. Just... please. Let me stay here. Let me stay dead." His shoulders shake and he curls his hands into the rags he wears. The girl stares at him.

"You can't stay here for much longer," she tells him. A sound escapes Klaus from the back of his throat.

"Please. Please, please, please, don't do it. Why - why let me die in the first place? I can't go back. I can't, I can't, I can't. I don't want to. _Please_, don't-"

"I am sorry, Klaus," says the girl, and she does look sorry. Then she touches him.

He's on his back again. He's shaking, gasping for breath, and burning alive. He blinks rapidly to clear his vision and focus it in the dark, and he sees Dave's face hovering above his, hollow and tear-stained. 

"Klaus," he splutters, and Klaus digs his fingers into Dave's arms as he tries to ground himself. "Klaus, you were - you stopped breathing. I felt something was wrong, and - and I turned you over, and you were just blue, and you weren't breathing, I - you had no pulse, Klaus," rambles Dave, and Klaus, slowly, lays back down, melting against the stone beneath him. He was. He was, and it was so blissfully nice, and he's alive again and back here.

He closes his eyes and tears fall past them. He can still taste lemonade in the back of his throat. At least his cough's gone.

He wonders, often, what would happen should he die again. Would he talk to Her again? Stay dead this time? Be sent back immediately? He isn't sure.

He gets his answer after a couple of weeks. He must have said something wrong, or looked wrong, or stood wrong, or slacked off, but boots force his stomach past his throat, fingers around his neck, and his head strikes something _hard. _He hears the crack it echoes, and it's only the second time that everything goes dark. He sees her face, frowning, apologetic, almost guilty, but before he can even begin to beg he's covered in his own blood and in the back of a truck, leaving work and back to camp, and with a horrific headache and thoroughly scaring the other prisoners in the truck. Dave asks him what happened. Klaus doesn't tell him. In the dark of night, Dave's lips ghost over a new scar running across the back of his skull. 

Every so often, Klaus catches a glimpse of a camera. Another man has it, another prisoner, and Klaus wonders if it's his job here. History textbooks had to get their pictures somehow, he thinks. He takes a picture, one time, of the barracks, and Klaus comes to a realisation. He needs to be in as many pictures as he physically can, if he has any hopes of not permanently dying here. On the off chance, say, that his family realise he's stolen that briefcase and try to find him. He needs to be in as many pictures as possible, and hope one of them survives. It's far from the best plan he's ever had, but it's the only one he has now.

And so each time he sees that camera, he steps forwards, spreads his hands - he isn't sure if he still looks vaguely at all like himself, but his tattoos are insane enough that he must be the only person to ever have them, and coupled with the Umbrella Academy tattoo, too, if his siblings see them, they'll have to know. Dave wonders why he's so obsessed with getting in each photo, but he follows alongside him. It gives Klaus some kind of motive that he's lost. It gives him a reason to keep standing, to force himself to eat when his arms are almost too heavy to life back up to his mouth. He wouldn't say that he necessary feels better. He wouldn't say that he feels good, or really optimistic. Rather, he'd say it's a last-ditch attempt to be saved rather than trust in his family to save him. But it's something. 

Once more, he finds himself in a truck. Once more, he's accompanied by an officer, and, much to his own surprise, he finds himself in the officer's house again. The children stare curiously at him, and it's not the officer that greets him, but the wife. It's been a lifetime, but she greets him like she knows him personally, although she looks him up and down in shock. He glances at the accompanying officer in confusion, and he steps forward.

_"Paint her," _he says, and he gestures for Klaus to follow the woman. Klaus does. The woman chatters on so fast Klaus can't actually catch what she's saying, but she guides him through the house until they reach a study room with a large window. There's already a canvas and easel and paints set up for him. There's two glasses of water and a platter of finger food. 

_"I hope you don't mind," _says the woman, _"but I just loved your art. My husband said that I should have a portrait of myself. Help yourself to anything, of course. Gosh, look at you - you look like a skeleton. Do they not feed you in that camp? Well, just tell me if you need anything. Is the lighting alright?"_

Klaus assures her that everything is, in fact, alright, and he doesn't talk about food. He sits down and he begins to paint. They have to take several breaks so that she can tend to her children. She has to make them their lunch and, while he's there, she insists on making something for Klaus, too. Something leagues above the lunch he would have received at the camp, too, and he repeats his thanks over and over again. 

_"Who is he?" _Asks the children. 

_"He painted that portrait of you all, remember? He's here to paint again. Be polite."_

Klaus tries his best to stay quiet and near invisible. He doesn't want the kids to know about him. Doesn't want them to remember him, although he knows that some of them are old enough that his face might stick in their memories. The mother's, certainly.

He eats and he tries to clean, ever aware of the officer's eyes on him. And then they go back upstairs, she sits down, and he paints. At some point, the officer has to leave briefly. Has to attend evening roll-call, perhaps, or something else, and he comes up to Klaus, sets a hand on his shoulder, leans close and says, _"I will know if you tell her anything. Understand?"_

Klaus swallows. He stares at the half-formed woman on the canvas in front of him. The grip on his shoulder tightens and Klaus forces himself to nod. Then the officer leaves after telling the woman to tell him if he does anything while he's away, and then it's just them.

_"Thank God. I hated how he just stood there, watching."_

Klaus looks up at that, a little shocked. He doesn't say anything. He adds another stroke to the canvas. 

_"What's your name?"_

Klaus hates that question. He hates it so much. It makes him feel like a lesser person. Makes him fear it. He was born a number, and now he's nothing but a number again. And it scares him how easily someone else can steal his entire identity from him, and make him scared of taking it back. He hates it. 

_"It doesn't matter."_

The woman raises an eyebrow. _"It's your name, though. Of course it does."_

_"No. I'm sorry."_

_"I won't tell."_

Klaus hesitates. The woman loses a bit of that bubbliness that she's held since he got here, a little glint in her eyes. _"My husband says that he's doing good. That it's paradise, the camps. You don't look like you're in paradise."_

Klaus stills. His hand clutches the paintbrush heavily, trembling. It's a chance. He could tell her everything, and maybe she could help him. Get him out of there. But she would mention it to her husband, and whether or not she mentioned Klaus, the officer would know. They would know and they would march right through the camp and beat him to death. Put a bullet in his head. Hang him. Any of it.

Klaus is a people person. He enjoys going to clubs and parties and raves, and he likes introducing himself to new people, dancing with strangers, putting himself out there. He has no problems shoving his way into groups of people, has no problems with strangers. He's never been properly afraid of people. He's looked at people and thought that they looked dangerous and sketchy, but he's never been scared of them. He's gotten himself into bad situations with strangers, but he's never been scared of people. He was never even afraid of Reginald, despite the mausoleum, and the canings, and all the punishments he put everyone through. He was never afraid of people. Not until now.

The fear he has when he hears shoes tapping, too nicely to be that of a prisoners, is bone chilling. He sees a man in those uniforms and his gut twists. He hears people coming up behind him without a limp and he stiffens, never sure whether or not the person will stop by him and beat him. People yell and dogs bark and he's scared. Hands settle on him and he's too fearful to twist out of their grip. They don't even need to be present for him to be scared of them, too. He knows there isn't a single officer here with him, but he fears what might happen to him after they return. He's terrified of them all. 

_"I can't. I'm sorry."_

He shakes his head and turns his gaze back to the canvas. His hand won't stop shaking. He can't afford to mess up the painting, either. The woman wears a slightly sour expression for a while, put off by his refusal to answer her questions. She knows something's wrong. Knows she's being lied to, but she doesn't know what the truth is.

_"Do you have family?" _She asks a while later.

_"Not here. They live in a different country."_

_"A big family?"_

_"Six siblings."_

_"Do tell me about them. I hate silence."_

Klaus swallows. _"Four... four brothers, and two sisters. We're all adopted. One... one of my brothers passed away. We used to be close when we were young. Only recently begun to speak again." _If a lifetime ago could be classed as recently, Klaus thinks. He cleans the paint off his brush and goes for another colour. 

_"What are their names?"_

_"Luther, Diego, Allison, Five, Ben and Vanya."_

_"Five?"_

_"It's a... nickname of sorts."_

_"Ah." _The woman nods her head. _"Do they know you're here?"_

Klaus shakes his head. _"No. They don't."_

Klaus keeps painting. _"Do you miss them?" _The woman asks. Klaus pauses.

_"All the time." _Even if he's sure they won't notice he's missing for a long time. Even if he's no more than a lying addict to them. 

She makes dinner, and enough so for Klaus, too. The officer hasn't returned by then, and Klaus almost feels relaxed. Almost. They return one last time to the painting. When it's done, Klaus stands up, cleans the brushes, sets them aside. He lingers for a moment, then dips one brush in black and, almost hidden by the dark colours in the corner, he writes his name. Despite the situation, he's proud of it. He realises he really does miss painting. Then he cleans that brush and gestures the woman over. She rises quickly, eagerly crossing the room and to his side, and she grins brightly when she sees it.

_"It's wonderful! I love it. Thank you. It is amazing." _She squeezes his arm in an affectionate gesture, then gestures out. _"Come. I'll make you some tea while we wait for the officer."_

He follows her back downstairs and into the kitchen. He takes a seat at the gestured table and soon finds a warm cup of tea hugged between his hands, and he breathes it in, murmuring his thanks repeatedly. He blows across its surface before taking a tentative sip of it. He closes his eyes and he thinks of Grace. He was never the closest to her - he doesn't think anyone could be closer to her than Diego was - but she had been there plenty of times after he had nightmares, after the mausoleum, whenever he was sick, whenever he was upset. He misses that motherly love that she offered, whether or not it was just a programme put in by Reginald or some real intelligence as Diego would believe. 

_"Do you have parents?" _She asks, as if reading his mind. Klaus glances up.

_"My father passed a few days before I arrived here. We were never close."_

_"And your mother?"_

_"Still alive. She is... she cares a lot for us."_

_"The most important woman in your life is your mother, you know," _she quips. She eyes Klaus. _"And as a mother myself, if my child looked like you - so lost and hurting - I would be horrified." _Klaus stills, and he wonders why she must speak like this. So caring, so motherly. He's probably not much younger than her himself, and he's old enough to be a father. He isn't a lost child that needs his mother, as if he has one that isn't a robot, to protect him. Nonetheless, he swallows, and he does miss Grace fiercely.

_"I'll see her sometime soon," _he lies. He knows he'll never see her again. The woman lingers, eying him. He's tried his best to avoid her questions and let her live in blissful ignorance, yet he still feels guilty. She deserves to know what her husband's doing, but Klaus doesn't want to know what would happen to him if he told her.

He doesn't quite finish the tea before the officer arrives, followed by the woman's husband. Klaus' relaxed muscles wind right back up, his eyes going down, and he doesn't watch the way the wife drops her previous curiosity and suspicions to greet her husband warmly. 

_"Oh, he was no bother, of course. Very quiet. Very polite. The painting is magnificent - you must come see it!"_

_"Are you sure he was respectful, ma'am?"_

Klaus stays as still as a statue. _"Hm? Oh, of course. No problem at all! Do be good to him, I appreciate his work."_

The officers linger for a moment before he guides Klaus out of the house, into the light snow outside, and into a truck. He wills his body to hold onto the warmth still in his bones from the house, holding his arms close to his body. He staggers out of the truck when it arrives back at the camp, and the officer whom had accompanied him grabs his arm. 

_"I don't know whether or not to believe that you were good. That you didn't tell the poor woman things she needn't know. That you didn't take things that don't belong to you."_

He says it with such a malicious glint in his eyes that Klaus knows he's lying through his teeth. Klaus' eyes widen and he shakes his head violently. "No," he says. _"No, no, I never did."_

The man grabs his face hard enough that he knows bruises will stain his jaw. His heart pounds furiously. He doesn't dare bring his hands up to defend himself. Not even when the man pulls his head forwards to spit in his face, and then throw him down onto the ground. He covers his head when he starts to kick him, tries to curl inwards, a futile attempt to keep himself safe. The snow beneath him gets speckled with crimson red that drips from his nose and then from his mouth. His ribs groan under the pressure of it all, and his lungs work like some chugging train, heavy and uneven breaths struggling down his throat. His bones shake, and Klaus thinks it's purely a miracle that his arm doesn't snap in half, what with the way the man bears down on it. His vision wavers briefly, floating in and out of clarity, and the man sets his foot on Klaus' back and pushes him into the snow. 

_"Get up." _Something cold and hard presses against the scar on the back of his head. _"Get up! Get up, or I'll shoot you! Get up!" _He yells it deafeningly loud in Klaus' ears, pushes his face down into the bloody snow with the barrel of his gun. He tries to push himself up, his arms shaking with the effort. The soldier just pushes down with his foot with more strength than Klaus can muster. He tries to breathe through the pain in his body and the snow in his face, uses that breath to beg incoherently, shamelessly. The guard just brings his foot up to throw it back into his ribs, and he feels something _crack _inwards. His pleas and cries falls on deaf ears. Whatever sense of peace from the house he still had was immediately gone, melting just like the snow beneath his hands. The heat remaining trapped in his bones, too, seemed to evaporate into the air, all at the expense of one sadistic guard.

The barrel of the gun was gone, replaced instead with the butt of it as he cracks it against his head, and then takes his foot off his back. He curls his fist into the back of his shirt, hauling him off the ground like one might handle a kitten. Klaus clings onto his wrist, blood dribbling past his lips. And the guard spits on him once more as if he's the most disgusting of vermin, drops him, and walks away. Klaus falls back onto the snow with a grunt, going boneless and heaving for his breath. He has to take several moments to grapple for consciousness, and then he struggles upright and onto his feet. One hand pinches his nose, the other wraps around his ribs, and he trudges towards the barracks. 

He wonders if his nose is broken, or his ribs, or his jaw. Pain throbs from all over, an equal ache everywhere. He crawls up onto his bunk, fitting in right behind Dave, who seems fast asleep. He rests his head against his back and drapes one arm over his side. He screws his eyes shut tightly, curls his hand into Dave's shirt, and his shoulders shake quietly. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I appreciate any and all feedback <3  
Additionally, would you want to see a recovery fic? And if so, would you want to see it in this fic, or as a separate sequel? Thank you!


	7. Chapter 7

A broken rib does him no good at all. Before he slept, shock had kept the pain at a constant, all-over throb, but the next morning he wakes to fire in his chest that remains an unpleasant companion, stealing his breath, for any time he tries to breathe deeply, stars blossom on his eyelids, exploding like a white-hot supernova. It aches when he lays down, and when he stands, and when he crouches, when he turns and when he bends, when he reaches up or reaches down. It steals his energy, too, and makes every day so much more miserable. 

And he knows that it's healing wrong. He can feel it. He can feel the way it's going to ache for the rest of his existence, an intolerable hindrance in his day to day life. When he washes he spares a brief glance to the dark bruises that seem to tattoo his skin permanently now, like spilled paint over his ivory skin, and the odd bump he feels when he, ever so tenderly, ghosts his fingers over it. He can't sleep on his right side unless he wants to risk seeing if the rib might bend further inwards and pierce him right through his lungs. He gets used to breathing in shorter breaths, in drawing it in for less time than usual, for a perfect amount of time so it doesn't hurt, although he finds himself out of breath much more than usual because of it. Work's hard, what with the tasks of carrying things that probably weigh more than himself, having to duck beneath low roofs in the coal mines, trek up steep inclines, reach up to haul himself onto the beds each night. He favours one side of himself much more than the other, although he tries to hold himself, especially in roll-call, in such a way that it doesn't display his weakness for it to be exploited so cruelly. 

He doesn't dare or bother to attempt to fix it with the medical knowledge residing somewhere in his blocked off memories of all those lessons Reginald had forced them to learn. He doesn't see much of a point in it. The pain drags him into constant exhaustion and the high that seemed to follow him with renewed energy with the mission of placing himself in front of every camera lens he sees wears off rapidly, morphing back into that monochrome heavy depression that had seized him so intimately before. It's almost like an old friend, the feeling, as it nestles into the marrow of his bruised bones, fitting snugly inside of him and weighing him down even further. It slows the days down, makes him feel like a ghost all over again, and it's simply a case of trudging to and fro, heaving his body here and there, wherever he's told to go, and of keeping his mouth shut and his eyes down to avoid bringing any more attention to himself, even if being overlooked is simple luck, no more than a lucky spin of the wheel. He can't spin it forever and hope to be ignored each time, though, and he knows this fact well.

The cold is something that only gets worse. If he thought it had been worse before, like that fateful night in which he spoke to a girl who was possibly God, or the closest interpretation of a real God, then he had been sorely misled for the upcoming winter. He almost longs for that sweltering heat of his arrival, the heat that had made him nauseous and dizzy and panting like an overexcited dog, for that hadn't seemed so bad compared to the cold nights, to the frigid winds and the biting snow and the slush it all turns into beneath his feet. He'd trade the stomach-cramping heat of the sun for the killing cold of now. 

He hasn't seen so many people collapse during roll-call. There were plenty who had, of course. It wasn't an uncommon thing, and Klaus knows he won't get away with only doing it once, but still. It hadn't been so frequent. He sees the people who had been here for the same length of time as himself give in to it all and fall, never to stand back up again. He sees new people begin to struggle, and Klaus almost envies them. Those with something on their bones and some sense of self identity and life left, some energy to spur them on. He almost envies them, but he knows they'll end up in the same place at the end of it all.

They talk, sometimes. After evening roll-call when they have free time and they're all huddled into the barracks to escape the snow and the winds somewhat, and he sees them feel the same shock he felt. They look at Klaus and they look at Dave and the skeletons around them and wonder how they're still standing, how it's possible for a human to look like they do. They look at them in the same horror and bewilderment Klaus had looked at people upon his own arrival, all that time ago. 

_"How long have you been here?" _They ask. Klaus and Dave just shrug each time.

_"It doesn't really matter how long we've been here. Longer than many. Too long."_

_"When will you leave? How do we get out?"_

Klaus laughs at that. The sound feels weird in his mouth, as if it doesn't belong there, as if it's a sound that shouldn't come from his lips. It sounds bitter and false, not entirely real, either. He thinks that the last time he laughed was when he was talking about his family to Dave, and even if it wasn't too long ago, he still feels as if he shouldn't laugh. _"Did you see the building with all the smoke coming from its chimneys?" _He asks, and they nod. _"We leave from there."_

They don't seem to quite understand him for a few days until they realise that the building Klaus had pointed out was the crematoria. 

There's one person, Klaus notices, that looks rather lost. More so than other people. Klaus scrutinises him for a while when everyone talks, and then, leaning forwards tentatively, he waves a hand towards him. _"What's your name?"_

He looks up from his hands. _"Elijah."_

_"And how old are you, Elijah?"_

He looks a little startled, hesitant. _"Nineteen."_

Klaus gives him a look. _"And how old are you really?"_

He swallows. _"Sixteen."_

Klaus closes his eyes. He decides that life is unfair and that he hates the little girl he had met, and he knows she's watching, too. She had admitted it. He looks down at his hands, at the little scars on his fingers and his palms that have appeared from the labour he's done, and he watches his skin ripple like waves over his bones as he flexes his fingers. He doesn't bother to ask where his family is. He clasps his hands together, looks Heavenward, and breathes deep enough to see stars. 

_"Stay quiet," _he tells him. _"And keep your head down, and do what you're told. Don't speak. Don't question anyone. Don't slack, or complain, or tell soldiers your name. And I... I'll watch out for you." _He promises it, and perhaps more so to himself. The kid looks almost scared from his warnings, but Klaus turns his attention to the dirt beneath his nails. He won't watch a sixteen year old be stripped apart like everyone else. 

Elijah's the eldest of three children, with two younger twin sisters whom had come with him and been sent in a different direction from himself. His mother had been sent with them and his father sent with himself, although he hasn't seen him. He wants to grow up to study law, and wants to move to America. He has a girlfriend who causes a smile to tug his lips when he mentions her. He plays the piano, although he claims he does so poorly. His mother has a large garden of blooming flowers that look like something a fairy might live in, that you could walk through and feel like you've been transported right into another world where everything's perfect and peaceful, and when the sun sets, it looks magical.

Klaus lets him ramble on up to curfew. He wants to see that warmness in his eyes forever. It feels like a breath of fresh air, almost. Something rare and incredible and Klaus wants to keep it safe, keep the kid safe, and keep him hidden in the back of the barracks forever, shield him from everything that goes on outside. But night comes too quickly, and at curfew they crawl back into the stone slabs of beds and fall silent. Although Klaus closes his eyes, and although he feels as if he has weights tied onto his body, exhaustion heavy on him, he doesn't fall asleep quickly. He lays with Dave to his chest, asleep so heavily one might think he's been knocked out. He listens to snores and coughs and moans, and then, later, murmuring. Murmurings about things like _escape. Overpower. Run. Help._

It strikes something in him. Something akin to terror. He knows what happens to people that try to escape. To the people that don't but slept in the same block as those who did, and are still punished for it all. He realises, suddenly, that he doesn't want to die. He really, really doesn't. Death seems so simple, so peaceful - and it was - and it would be so much easier to die than to live. So much better. But he doesn't want to. He simply doesn't want to be here, and while he might prefer death to this hollow shell of a life he has, the idea of a permanent death seizes him with icy terror. 

It's not as if he could try and escape and steal his freedom back, either. He can't breathe properly to run. His head spins at any exertion. His legs wouldn't cope with it. His escape would only bring him a potentially sooner death. 

He screws his eyes shut, rests his forehead against Dave's back, and holds him like a life line.

Elijah's an easy target, and everyone knows it. All the younger people are. Some people aren't willing to put themselves at risk for the sake of someone who'll die either way, but Klaus remembers the man who had let him use his bar of soap to half-heartedly try and clean himself, and how he had talked about still being _human. _And what kind of human would he be if he stood by and watched the destruction and death of a teenager? One without humanity, that is. One no better than the people doing the destruction, he thinks. And so he keeps his eyes on Elijah in roll-call. If they work in the same place, Klaus watches him (even if Elijah seems more concerned about the shaking of Klaus' knees and the rattling of his breath than he is concerned about himself) and at dinner and in their free time. He wonders if this attachment with keeping someone vulnerable safe is a last-ditch attempt to give himself something to keep on going for, or to focus on, or if he's just projecting.

Dave does the same. Klaus wonders if he sees him as Amalie, like a younger sibling, and he tries to protect him in the way that he couldn't with Louise and Amalie. At night, Klaus settles his hand onto Dave's hip and tells him _it's not your fault. None of it is._

They stand in roll-call one evening. The coal mines were frigid, with puddles of icy water that made his hands shake, and the wind now makes Klaus' head droop. He stares absently at his feet and the snow around them, and he thinks again about winters at the Academy. They never had Christmas - they never had any kind of holiday - and Klaus wonders, vaguely, what a normal family's Christmas might look like. Large, forest green trees, covered top-to-bottom in tinsel, silver and gold and green and red, and bright, twinkling fairy lights, and bobbles, icicles, angels, and little reindeers, snowmen, teddies, mini snow globes, and a large star sitting right on the top of it. There'd be stacks of presents with perfect bows upon them, ribbons tied around them, with wrapping paper covered in little Santa's, all sitting below the tree. There'd be a roaring fireplace, with stockings hung above them, and there'd be cheesy Christmas songs. Oh, the Academy would be a perfect place to decorate. It would look a bit like a kid's dream idea of a Christmas eve's night and Christmas' morning. Klaus would love to hang some decorations around, and drag everyone into it. Christmas carols and all. He'd blare Mariah Carey's Christmas bop on repeat, and he'd wear his most outrageous of clothes. Maybe some Christmas lingerie that would undoubtedly scar his siblings, but accentuate all of Klaus' bones. A lacy red garment with white feathers along the trim, and it'd dip down his chest, part half way down his ribs and flare out until his mid thigh, maybe, and Diego would beg him to put clothes on. Five would call him disgusting, but he'd catch the old man humming under his breath later, no doubt, to his mannequin lover. Luther would certainly disapprove, maybe call him an unsavoury name that Klaus has heard many times before, and Klaus would just wiggle his eyebrows and twirl in time to the music and hang up another decoration; a line of reindeers, maybe, with a sleigh at the end, and it'd line the wall and twinkle in the light of the chandelier, and -

_"I'm sorry!"_

Klaus blinks, shaking his head ever so slightly, and looking up. He's not at home, not celebrating Christmas. He's half conscious in a line of corpses, and Elijah, standing in the row behind him, has an officer gripping his jaw, jabbing the barrel of his rifle into his chest. Klaus didn't catch what happened, but he can see the sudden panic as it builds in Elijah, his chest heaving, and Klaus shares a look with Dave, a few people to his left, and then the officer slams the butt of his rifle into Elijah's stomach, and then brings his fist across his face. He crumples into the snow with a horrific, high yell, and Klaus swallows down a lump in his throat. No one says anything. No one does anything. No one's that suicidal to try and interfere. The officer kicks him in the stomach once, twice, and then across his face, and blood trickles sluggishly from his nose and down his cheek.

_"Stop! Stop it!" _Yells Klaus, taking a hesitant step forwards. He freezes immediately as the officer turns and lays his eyes on him, and then he takes his step back, blood running cold. 

_"Stop?" _Echoes the officer, incredulous, and an amused, bitter smile spreads his lips. He steps away from Elijah, though, and prowls towards Klaus instead, like a tiger approaching some trapped, injured doe, and Klaus can't move. _"You want me to stop?"_

Klaus swallows. He can't find strength enough to move his tongue. To force a sound past his throat. The officer laughs. _"Speak, then, since you so want to. Don't stop now. I asked you a question and you will answer it. Do you want me to stop?"_

He stands right up in front of Klaus, a wicked look in his eyes, and Klaus regrets it. He nods anyway. 

_"Say it."_

_"Stop... let him be. He did nothing. Please. He's young. Please."_

_"Since you asked so nicely... I'll make you a deal," _says the officer. Klaus doesn't dare breathe. He can see Elijah sitting up over his shoulder. _"You for him." _

Klaus glances up at the dark sky hanging above him. What's one more night? What's one more beating? If it doesn't happen today, it'll happen soon enough, anyway. Elijah waves his hand slightly, shaking his head. _I'm fine, _he mouths. And sure, he might have more energy, stronger bones, and he might be able to bounce back quicker than Klaus will, but Klaus finds himself filled suddenly with anger. It surges up in him like a tsunami. He's so tired that the anger and hatred has been muted, dull, dormant in his bones, but he feels it now. He curls his hands into fists by his side, grits his jaw. 

He hates God, and he hates Hazel and Cha-Cha, and he hates the man in front of him, and all the uniformed people around him, and he hates himself, hates his family, and he despises everything so violently. What's one more night?

_"Deal."_

The officer smiles, glances down at his feet, nods, and Klaus finds himself on the snow within a split second. Whatever restraint he might have held for Elijah disappears. Lessons, Klaus thinks. He needs to be taught a lesson for speaking out, and he's an example for everyone else, too. He closes his eyes, although his left eye does so more out of swelling than out of will, and he listens to the satisfying crunch as snow gets crushed beneath his skeleton, and something coppery builds a puddle in his throat. He manages to bring his arms up around his head, at least, and he wonders, faintly, if God will say anything this time. 

He feels it, of course. Each fist, each foot, each hit with the rifle. He feels it all until, oddly, he doesn't. He feels it in the way that other people must; like a phantom of pain as he watches it happen to someone else. It's not happening to himself. Not really. The blood in his lungs isn't really there, nor is the ringing in his ears really real, or the way his hips weep with stings of pain. His arms fall down. A foot on his chest rolls him onto his back, and his eyes don't move when a hand waves in front of his face. 

Roll-call continues on with him on the floor as if nothing happened. The people either side of him ignore the way blood gurgles in the back of his throat with each burning breath, and Elijah manages to keep his crying as silent as Dave's, even if Dave's had more practice. Klaus is more focused on Ben, though. He's there, crouching in front of Klaus, with his eyebrows drawn together, mouth shaping his name. 

Klaus smiles. He's never been so relieved to see Ben, he thinks. He lets that be the last image in his mind before his eyes go cloudy and stop seeing.

He's on the floor again. He sits up with no pain despite the blood staining his skin and his clothes, and he blinks, turns his face to the sun shining down upon him, and closes his eyes. He hears grass crunch beneath feet and he doesn't bother opening his eyes.

"Another break, huh?" He mumbles. The girl sits next to him.

"You weren't supposed to do that," she says. Klaus quirks an eyebrow.

"What, save a child?"

"Get yourself killed. Again."

Klaus shrugs. "Well, fuck you, too."

The girl looks severely unimpressed. Klaus continues. "If you're that pissed at me being killed repeatedly, then just let me fucking stay here." He says it with more venom than he intends to, but he doesn't try to take it back.

"I can't do that, Klaus."

"And why not?" Klaus sits up, then, opening his eyes to glare at her. "Are you having too much fun watching me down there? How many times do I need to die for it to stick? Are the beatings too boring? Freezing, too? I could get myself hung or shot, if that'd be more entertaining for you. Is that it?"

"Klaus, I will send you back if you don't stop-"

"And? You'll send me back anyway!" Klaus snaps. His bloody fingers curl into the grass beneath him. "Why? Why can't you just let me stay dead? How many times is this going to happen? You could stop this! You - you're fucking God! You could send me back home, you could stop this!" His eyes sting. His cheeks feel wet. "Why don't you stop this?" He pleads.

"I can't interfere with life like that, Klaus-"

"Yes you can!" Cries Klaus. "You can!" 

The girl sighs in irritation and turns her face towards the sky, as if seeking patience from a higher God. "It's not that simple, Klaus-"

"Then tell me!" He demands. "Why isn't it that simple? Why? Why do I need to have this happen to me?"

"It's not forever."

"I didn't do anything to deserve it," Klaus says. "You can't just punish some drugs with - with this!"

"I'm not punishing you," says the girl. 

"Then why?"

Klaus drops his head into his shaking hands. He takes advantage of the ability to breathe here, heaving heavy breaths into his lungs. "I hate you," he mutters. "I hate you. I hate you so much."

"I'm not here to be liked, and certainly not by you."

"Oh, did I hurt your ego? I'm sorry," Klaus hisses. "Forgive me if I'm a bit fucking spiteful." For a moment, he almost feels like himself. Like the man who had gotten out of rehab and overdosed in the same night. He almost feels like him again. He rises to his feet. "Send me back, then. Do it. Do it! Each time I die, I swear to - to - to someone, I'm going to make your life a living Hell."

The girl doesn't look convinced. "Goodbye, Klaus," she says, and she's gone. 

He's being carried. His eyes sting, his vision blurry, and he blinks rapidly to clear it. His eyes were open before he had even woken up again. He supposes he never closed them before he died. Pain hits him like a freight train, and it pulls a groan from his mouth. He realises, though, that his lung isn't clogged with blood. There's no puncture in it anymore. His ribs still hurt like Hell, and so does his entire body, but everything potentially fatal seems gone. Roughly smoothed over.

The person carrying him startles so badly that he almost drops Klaus. Klaus barely has enough coordination to curl his hand into the person's clothes to catch himself just in case, but he manages to do so somehow. He forces his eyes upwards and he sees Dave, again. Klaus wonders if he's traumatised Dave, dying so much in front of him only to wake right back up in his arms. He wants to say sorry. 

"Klaus? Klaus? H-how?" 

"He's okay? He's - he's alive?" Klaus recognises Elijah's voice and to Dave's left, he stands, just as shocked. 

Dave crouches enough so that he can rest Klaus on the floor, keeping his arm around his back to keep him propped up. "Klaus - how? You were -"

" 'm fine," says Klaus, cutting him off and waving his hand dismissively. He runs the back of his hand over his mouth and it comes back red, and he wonders how much blood one person can lose. He must be nearing the limit, surely.

Dave's face looks a mess of conflict and confusion, trying and failing to rationalise the situation to himself, and Klaus squeezes his arm. "Not dead. Can't-" he pauses to cough. There might not be blood in his lungs, but he can feel it still in the back of his throat, bitter and strong. "Get rid of me that easily."

Dave ducks his head. "Klaus... twice," he murmurs. "Twice, I don't... I just don't understand..."

"I wouldn't try to," Klaus admits with a grimace. He holds his arms up. "Help me up. I... fuck, it hurts." He screws his eyes shut for a moment and feels Dave grip his arms, then, with Elijah coming around to his back, they heave him up and onto his feet. Another groan escapes his lips as the world tilts viciously around him and he slings his arm around Dave's shoulders, and his other over Elijah's. They turn around and Klaus notices with some delayed horror that they had been facing the crematoria. They turn back to the washrooms now, though, trudging towards it slowly.

"You shouldn't have done that," utters Elijah. "I can take a hit. You... no offense, but you look a second from death on a good day, I bet."

Klaus snorts softly. "Not gonna watch a sixteen year old get beat to death," he replies. "What's one more?" He mutters that more so to himself, as if it's become his own little phrase for himself, his mantra. 

He manages to scrub most of the blood off his skin in the washroom. Dave helps when it hurts too much to reach for a specific place, and he helps gently try and clean it from the back of his head, too. They stay silent and do the job quickly, eager to get out rather than linger and risk the attention of another guard, and then the trio staggers out and back into the barrack's. He all but collapses onto the bed, only slowed by Dave's hands catching him before he can whack his head off the stone carelessly. Elijah drifts into his own bunk opposite them. Dave curls around Klaus' back. His hands shake. 

"I never know what to expect with you," he murmurs. "I'm scared that you'll leave and you won't come back."

Klaus bites his lip. "Before this," he says, "people used to say I was the most stubborn person they've ever met. Did things out of spite, too. They want me to die, so I won't let them get that."

It's dark, dark enough that Klaus can slide his hand along the stone and find Dave's. Dave hesitates, stills, holds his breath as Klaus slips their fingers together. But then he squeezes his hand lightly in return and his forehead brushes the back of Klaus' neck. 

He finds himself in the house again. Specifically called for from the wife, accompanied by an officer - thankfully not the one that accompanied him the last time - that leaves him at the door with a warning, because there's more people coming to the camps today and he's too busy to watch Klaus. Plus, Klaus hardly thinks they can even claim he's a threat; covered in so many bruises like he is, unable to walk with a limp, unable to stand for too long without the world spinning. They arrive slightly earlier than necessary and instead of allowing him to simply knock on the door early, the officer tells him to wait outside for the half hour he has to wait. Even once the officer leaves, Klaus can't bring himself to knock the door until he sees the clock outside tell him half an hour has passed. Just in case.

The wife, whom he learns is called Hedwig, all but recoils from him when she opens the door. _"Oh, dear... come in, come in; you'll catch your death out there." _

She ushers him inside, into the warmth of her home with the fire roaring nearby. _"Sit down. I'll make you some tea - and food."_

_"You don't need to, ma'am-"_

_"Nonsense. You sit and warm up there, I'll be back in a moment."_

She hurries off and he hears a kettle boil. She returns quickly, holding a bowl of steaming soup in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, and she places both on the table in front of him, fetches her own tea, and sits down on the armchair to his left. Klaus breathes his thanks many times before lifting the bowl of soup up and slowly sipping it off the spoon. He closes his eyes in bliss at the taste and the warmth, and the bowl's empty before he realises it. His cheeks flush rosy pink and he stands up with both empty dishes.

_"Where can I wash this?" _He asks.

Hedwig tuts and shakes her head. _"I'll take it. Here, hand it over."_

Klaus does so hesitantly. He follows her into the kitchen, feeling somewhat useless as she cleans the dishes. 

_"Did you want me to paint?" _He asks. She hums, sparing him a glance.

_"I suppose they'll expect you to, won't they, Klaus?"_

Klaus stills. His name spoken by anyone but Dave, or now Elijah, feels like a threat in itself. _"What?"_

_"I almost didn't see it; written right in the corner, so small. Klaus Hargreeves. That's your name."_

Klaus doesn't know what to say. Hedwig turns to eye him. _"Why do you not want people to know your name?"_

Klaus curls his hands into fists. _"It's not important, ma'am. I'm sorry. Please, just - what do you need me to paint?"_

_"Ideally, we'd just talk, but something tells me that you wouldn't want to leave without proof of you doing something."_

Klaus' jaw clenches. She moves swiftly onwards, bringing him through the house and to the dining room with its large windows overlooking the snow-coated garden, sparkling in the sunlight. There's already an easel and some paints. He sits down on the stool in front of the easel.

_"I'd love to have a painting of the garden, but working outside would just be a death wish."_

Klaus silently nods. He picks up a brush. He wets it slightly, dries it of excess water, and dips it in paint.

_"You somehow manage to look worse every time I see you."_

Klaus toys with his lip. He doesn't know what to say, so he just shrugs.

_"Where did the bruises come from?"_

_"They're nothing."_

_"I doubt that, for some reason." _She sits next to him as he paints this time, watching him do each stroke on the canvas.

_"It's my fault."_

_"And how is it your fault?"_

_"I initiated it." _It's not necessarily a lie. Not at all. He had asked for it all, if anything. 

_"Klaus-"_

_"Please." _He pauses, paintbrush hovering over the canvas as he turns to look at her. _"It's best for the both of us if I don't say anything."_

Hedwig presses her lips together. She looks away and swipes furiously at her eyes. _"I know I'm being lied to, Klaus. By my own husband, no less. And if he's in charge of making the thousands of people with you look as you do now, I need to know that. I have no proof of what he's doing. No one tells me a thing. I catch things they don't mean for me to hear, but it's never enough."_

Klaus closes his eyes. _"I'm sorry. I am. If I tell you a thing, they'll know, and-" _He heaves a sigh and turns to his painting. 

_"What will they do if you tell me?"_

Klaus shakes his head. _"You have a very nice home."_

Hedwig sighs at that. She looks out the window. Little flakes of ice twirl down from the sky. The fire crackles in another room, warmth seeping into him. 

_"We used to live in Berlin. We moved here to be closer for my husband's work," _she says. Klaus nods absently. He glances out the window again. He could imagine the garden in spring and in summer, with flowers all at full bloom, lining the walls and growing up the fences, a wall of crimson and sky blue. The sun would cast a golden glow across it all, cast the light right into the kitchen, a heavenly hue, and he could imagine sitting out there in the warmth of the evening, a cup of lemonade hugged between his hands, a dog lazing at his feet. It would be peaceful. Pretty. Soothing. 

_"It's a nice place."_

Hedwig hums. _"Too isolated for my liking. I can't meet with all my friends like I used to. Though I suppose my time's been little, what with kids and all. How old are you?"_

Klaus hesitates._"Twenties," _he answers.

_"Do you want kids of your own?"_

Klaus pauses at that. _"I don't think I'd make a very good father."_

_"I thought the same. I don't think anyone really knows how to go about parenthood. I have five kids and I'm still not sure I'm doing this right." _She shakes her head, taps her nails along the table. _"But I wouldn't take it back for the life of me."_

_"You have beautiful children. I'm sure you're a great mother. You... you remind me a bit of my own mother."_

_"What's she like?"_

Klaus takes a breath. He leans back from his canvas. _"Her name's Grace. She was always there for all of us. She - she isn't our birth mother, but that didn't matter to her. She struggled with being home alone when we all left, I think. I regret not speaking to her more often."_

Hedwig nods. _"A mother's love is unconditional." _She pauses, and she really looks at Klaus, then. Takes in the rags with stains and blood that he couldn't get out that he wears, the shadow-lined eyes and his skeleton that stretches his skin thin, hidden briefly behind splatters of bruises. _"You go back to her when you leave."_

Klaus looks down at his paintbrush. _"Yeah," _he croaks. 

Her kids come downstairs at some point. He sees them bundle up and run outside, laughing so purely, and he watches them build up snowmen from the ground, and they throw snowballs at one another. Their laughter drifts in through the door and the windows, and a fond smile adorns Hedwig's lips. He has to force himself to keep painting and stay focused. 

Hedwig makes more tea and brings out snacks enough to feed the entire barrack's. He wishes he could bring some back for Dave. He almost feels bad, getting these few painting retreats where he's warm and given real food and he's relatively safe. Dave deserves it. 

_"You know," _Hedwig says later, standing over her stove. _"Each time you leave I'm scared for you."_

Klaus adds another stroke to the canvas. He tries to focus on each individual minor detail for this painting, his tongue poking between his teeth. _"You shouldn't worry for me," _he responds timidly.

_"I think I have a reason to."_

_"Please, don't."_

_"At the very least, Klaus, tell me why you won't tell me what's happening."_

Klaus signs the painting with his name. He puts the paintbrushes down and turns to look at her, and she turns to look at him. _"I can't stand any more lies," _she tells him.

_"If I were to tell you, whether or not you say anything about it, they'll kill me," _he states. They'll try to, anyway. Could he come back from a bullet to the brain? He doesn't think so. It seems impossible. 

_"What do you mean?"_

Klaus heaves a sigh. His shoulders slump. His hips ache. _"Just that." _He swallows. _"Please. Don't talk to your husband about it. It's best you don't know and I can't tell you."_

Hedwig looks sad. _"Can I do anything for you?"_

Klaus looks at his paintings. _"Remember me, if nothing else. Keep my art. Tell people about me."_

It's a futile attempt and he knows it, but surely the wife of an officer will be listened to. She must be mentioned in some books, some interviews, some records. She can say his name, and maybe it'll pop up in an article for his siblings, and maybe they'll see it. 

The officer returns. 

_"I'll ask for you again," _says Hedwig. She sounds pained as she watches Klaus heave himself onto his feet and watches his muscles go tense again. _"Take care, please."_

Klaus doesn't make any promises. She asked for no more lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this, and the little bit more of the wife and his art. As always I love hearing all your opinions and thoughts! 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @veteranklaus.
> 
> Thank you <3


	8. Chapter 8

Klaus doesn't think the bruises fade. If they do, they do so infinitely slower than normal. Klaus isn't entirely sure what he looks like anymore. Not at all the same, he knows. Dave's changed too, of course. Changed drastically from the man with curled hair and a warmth in his eyes, and Klaus watches Elijah follow the same path as them. His cheekbones get a little more defined, clothes a little looser, eyes a little duller. Klaus hates it.

He wants to see the photos of himself. He still lunges for each camera he sees, still spreads his hands out, holds his arm out, shows off his unchanging tattoos. He wants to see each photo in a perfect timeline from the first to now. Wants to see himself chip away like dust, wants to watch bruises blossom across his skin, watch himself change until he looks like an impostor rather than himself. 

He does get the chance to see himself. He's pulled from the coal mines early one day and, still shaking, his arms still caked in dust, he's loaded into a truck by himself and brought back to the house that seems a bit like Heaven these days.

He's left outside, and he tries, uselessly, to wash some coal off himself with the snow until it gets too unbearably cold and he gives up and waits for Hedwig to open the door. She does so with a child on her hip, and something in her face shifts as she regards Klaus, eyes sweeping him up and down. She ushers him inside, tells her child to go play, and then she closes the door behind Klaus. 

_"Do they not let you shower there?" _She tuts jokingly, and Klaus grimaces. He doesn't tell her that the water's as dirty as himself, and half the time he's too afraid of catching something from it to use it. He isn't sure he'd survive something as small as a cold at this rate, and even if he knows he'll come back, it means nothing. He still doesn't want to die, even if he'll come back like nothing happened.

She must catch his expression, though, because her own turns sour. _"Come. God, if I knew I would have let you use our shower every time-"_

_"Oh, no, no, I can't," _says Klaus, shaking his head adamantly. Hedwig raises her eyebrow.

_"You can, and you will. I'll show you how to use it." _

She guides him upstairs at a slow pace, for Klaus' legs burn as it is from the stairs in the coal mine and he has to suck in breaths in short gasps for fear of irritating his ribs again, and he doesn't dare cling to the banister in fear of dragging his filth across it. Hedwig brings him to a bathroom that - well, is a normal bathroom. Klaus lingers in the doorway, something sad in his chest. He forgot that bathrooms could look like this.

She hangs up a fluffy towel for him and shows him how to work the shower, and then she leaves, gently closing the door behind her. Klaus turns the shower on, letting the water heat up as he strips off his clothes, and then he turns to regard the mirror hanging above the sink. He steps as far from it as he can to try and see as much of himself in it as possible. 

Dead. It's the first word he'd use to describe himself. A corpse, a skeleton, a walking bag of black and blue bones. His ribs look like a rack of blinds, each one prominent and pushing against his skin, and his waist dips inward before it reaches his hips. He can place his feet together, place his knees together, and his thighs never meet, never come close at all. The skin of his elbows curves, looks almost like webbed skin, for there's no muscle or fat beneath it to give him real shape. His ankles stand out sorely, one a mottle of green and yellows, and he can see, quite clearly, where his rib broke. There's nothing but a layer of paper-thin skin to hide his bones from sight.

If he was Hedwig, he would have grabbed his children and kicked him out by now. He's horrific. Disgusting. Scarring for a child to lay his eyes upon, no doubt. And he knows that her kids aren't all just one or two years old - one's ten, he knows, old enough to understand what they're looking at. Old enough to remember. 

He turns away from his reflection. Twists around and stares at his spine, at his sore tailbone, and then he turns away violently and steps into the shower. The hot water shocks him and burns his feet, and he closes his eyes. The water trailing off him turns murky, gross, until he's scrubbed long enough that he, for the first time in a very long time, can say that he's actually clean. He turns the water off with great reluctance and reaches for the soft towel given to him, and he dries his face, first, his neck, lower and lower. He lifts his face from the towel at one point to come face-to-face with his reflection, and it startles him.

He doesn't recognise himself. His face looks nothing like him. Hollowed out, eyes dull and lined with shadows, and there's still bruises on his jaw and the remnants of a black eye around his left eye. He hurries to turn away from the corpse in the mirror, hurries to dry himself off and put his clothes on before he can be sick. He hurries from the bathroom and finds Hedwig downstairs again, and she smiles at him.

_"See, you look much better. Some colour in your cheeks again."_

_"I'm sorry," _says Klaus before he can stop himself. Hedwig looks at him quizzically. 

_"What for?"_

_"I didn't know I looked like that. You shouldn't want your children around me."_

Hedwig frowns at him, her eyes flitting aside. _"Don't speak like that. It's nonsense. I don't want to hear you say something like that again, okay?"_

Klaus presses his lips together, eyes his feet, then nods once. They go to the kitchen where Hedwig brews them both a tea and plates some food which Klaus tries to pace himself in eating. There's an easel in the living room again and he takes his place there once they move into the room, sitting blissfully close to the roaring fireplace.

_"What do you want me to paint?"_

Hedwig crosses one leg over the other, lounging on a nearby armchair. She glances up from the cup of tea in her hands. _"Would you paint your family for me?"_

_"What?" _Klaus sits up, startled, eyes wide on her.

_"Your family. You talk about them and I can see that you miss them. I want to know what they look like." _

Klaus swallows, turns back to the canvas. _"Alright," _he says, and he pictures them all in his head in vivid detail despite the distance. He paints Diego first, clad in his black clothes, and mixes colours for his skin tone and his scars, but he leaves out that stupid knife harness he always wears. He puts Five next to him, his hair slightly askew, his lips tight together, uniform on, eyes unamused. Vanya goes next to him, looking down slightly, her hair pulled back from her face, and he paints her violin in her hands. He can almost hear it. Allison goes next to her, her chin high, a smirk on her lips, hair framing her face, and Luther stands beside her, his face pinched, shoulders broad, standing defensively. And in the back, Klaus paints Ben. His face is ingrained into his mind after the years they spent together, and he shakes slightly as he paints him. Grace joins them in the back corner, lips vibrant, pearls white. The background turns black, like a shadow, a void. 

By the time he looks up, it's dark in the room. He's not stopped painting. He looks at his siblings in front of them and, in a wobbly scrawl, puts his name in the corner, followed by _4\. _Then he puts the paintbrush down and puts his head into his hands. 

How long has he been gone? Have they even noticed? Do they even care? He likes to imagine that they do. He wants so badly to imagine that they're all worried for him and trying to do something, but reality tells him that it's unlikely. 

A warm hand settles on his back and he jumps slightly, but it's just Hedwig standing by his side. She slides her hand down to his side and tugs him so that he leans against her and she tells him that _they're beautiful. _Klaus can't see the painting through tears.

She makes dinner - makes more for Klaus, because he missed lunch, so busy with his painting. She hangs his painting above her fireplace and tells him that she'll keep it for him. Klaus stares up at it before he leaves. 

_"After this ends," _he tells her, _"show people this. Please."_

Hedwig smiles softly at him. _"I will. Stay safe until next time, Klaus. Please."_

Klaus looks away. _"Thank you."_

And, just before the officer comes, she comes close to him and places something into his hand; a bag. A bag with food in it, and a hand mirror. It's a small one, with a swan on the front of it, and he isn't sure why she's giving it to him, but he hides it beneath his shirt when he leaves. 

He takes the food back and, when everyone's laying down at night, he turns slowly to face Dave behind him. Dave's eyes blink open at the movement and Klaus brings the bag out with a genuine smile. He opens it, takes Dave's hand and guides it into the bag until he picks up one of the bars in there, and his eyes widen slightly.

"Klaus, where did you-"

"Shhh." Klaus holds his hand up. He doesn't trust the people around him. If it gets them some privilege, people will rat others out sometimes. He doesn't want to risk it. "Just eat them. They're good."

Dave does. Klaus has one and then leaves one for Elijah and leaves the rest for Dave, who rests a hand on his stomach later. "Thank you," he murmurs, and Klaus squeezes his arm.

"Don't mention it," he responds. Dave drapes an arm around him when he shivers against the stone, and they hide the last piece of food between themselves. Klaus rests his forehead against him and when he sleeps, he dreams about a bathroom. A bathroom with a large, deep bath that never gets cold, and Klaus can stay there for the rest of eternity.

"They're planning to escape," Dave tells him one night. "People outside have heard what's going on and they're trying to help. There's places we can hide out of the camp until we're safe, and then we can - we can just go. Leave the country as soon as possible, or hide with a family for a while - we can go."

Klaus' fingers twitch. "Dave..." He swallows dryly. "You know what always happens."

Dave's face falls. "I know," he murmurs. "I know. But it's nothing short of a miracle that we're still alive now. It won't last much longer. You've already..."

"I know," says Klaus. He doesn't know how he'd even do it, though. He can hardly run. Can hardly stand in roll-call each day anymore. But fuck it, if he won't try. He hasn't had the chance to spit on one of the guards before he dies yet. Maybe he can do it this time. "Alright. Fuck it. Fuck it. When? What's going on? We'll try."

Dave looks a little giddy, and Klaus feels so too. The idea of escape has him feeling high, light and determined. Fuck it, thinks Klaus. The idea terrifies him because he really, really doesn't want to die, but he finds himself feeling more open to it. It'll stick one time. He might as well make it running.

When it gets dark, Dave leans close, and he tells Klaus everything he heard.

The idea weighs heavily in him. He thinks of it almost every second of every day. When an officer grabs his face to yell at him, he just thinks of the escape. He shares knowing look with people in the barrack's. A tension grows. They tell Elijah. Elijah doesn't know where his father is, but he's been there long enough, at least, that they know the likely outcome. He agrees to come. Klaus swears they won't leave him. They won't. 

The idea follows him like a ghost. It lingers in the back of his mind, dances in the periphery of his consciousness. It sits at his fingertips, it eats away at him, makes his stomach churn and limbs shake - but, for once, not from pain or exhaustion, but from excitement. 

They need to wait until the perfect moment, however, and each day Klaus wakes up with a little more energy to fight, but with more fear that that day might be his last, and he'll miss the chance for freedom. 

As it is, though, all he can do is wait and work. Accept the tea in the morning, the tea at night, and hope for food at lunch, and hope that his legs stay upright throughout roll-call. 

He isn't sure what he'll do after it, if they actually get out. They'll have to hide, of course, stay low. Hope that someone on the outside helps them. Dave's insistent on leaving the country - leaving Europe entirely, if they can - and Klaus is fine with that. He forgets about his family in this time. He has no way to get to his family, so there's no point in wasting his time and energy thinking over them when he needs to think on how he'll keep himself running, how he'll keep himself silent, and how they'll get out of Europe. That's the main thing.

Perhaps Klaus will just live a life out with Dave. They'll watch the war finish and watch Auschwitz be liberated, and, if they can, they might talk about it in years to come; expose all the dirty secrets of the inside. They might do interviews, or they might just entirely leave this time of their lives out. They'll care for Elijah like their own little brother, or perhaps like a father, and they'll just live a life with freedom. Maybe Klaus will go to Reginald, one day. He'll turn up to the Academy before he's even been born, just on the off chance of Reginald already being there. He'll watch the Umbrella Academy rise and tell Dave _I told you so, _and then he'll grow old, and free, and, hopefully, he'll die.

That's if they make it out. He isn't sure what he'll do if Dave or Elijah dies, and if he does, too, but gets sent back, right in front of all of the Nazi's, and he's turned into some guinea pig for sadistic experimentation. Klaus is just grateful that no one seems to care enough about him to realise he's died more than once now and is somehow still around.

The whispers spread. The whispers turn into a solid plan. Knowing looks are spread, their voices stay hushed, and people linger outside to eye the fences and the darkest places to run in. Time grows near. Klaus thrums with nervous energy. He works, and he waits. He watches people who, one night, had spoke so eagerly about escape, a light returning to their eyes, only to die in their sleep, or during work, or in roll-call. He's forced onto his hands and knees, one evening, because he's that jumpy, twitchty, nervous that it pisses off a guard and, well, if he's that energetic, he might as well use that energy to get some healthy exercise in, they say. Klaus only manages two push-ups before he collapses face-first into the snow, and it's not just because of the boot weighing down his back. Even flat on the ground, half-suffocated in snow, the boot stays, pushing down. His back doesn't break like he fears, but his already fragile, fractured ribs grind and crack without much resistance. The guard must be in a good mood, though, because he doesn't force his ribs through his lungs, and even acknowledges and allows Klaus to be held upright. Klaus doesn't trust it. 

He ends up in Hedwig's house once more. Talk has told him that escape will be soon. It might be that night, if things go right. It's been snowing on and off, and it's utterly freezing, and Klaus knows that some of them will die and not because of the Nazi's. But if it's heavy enough snow, it might just help them as much as curse them, because surely the guards will struggle in it too. 

_"You seem different today,"_ says Hedwig, watching him sip tea._ "One might say you almost seem happy."_

Klaus shrugs. _"I'm grateful to be indoors,_" he says, watching snow flutter down the window.

_"It's not just that, I can tell."_

Klaus stills. He looks back to his canvas, half-started; he had begun to paint the Umbrella Academy, with it's large gates and towering walls. _"It is,"_ he insists. Hedwig leans forwards, and there's a glint in her eyes.

_"Can I help?_" She asks. 

_"I don't know what you mean."_

_"You do. And, Klaus, I might not know everything that goes on in there, everything they do to you, but I do not want it to continue. If I can help, I will."_

Klaus swallows. The house is empty; the officers are busy and the kids are outside. Hedwig has been nothing but incredibly kind to Klaus.

_"We... there was talk of an escape attempt," _he admits in a whisper, on the off chance someone might be listening. _"Tonight."_

Hedwig looks at him for a moment, and then she nods. _"Well, I suppose you best be back there early tonight, to catch some rest. And it seems that tonight is as good as any to have a dinner for my husband and some of his colleagues, with some drink, too. Some entertainment deep into the night." _She smiles at him, and Klaus shakes. He hears the truck approach outside, and he has to leave his half-finished painting with her. Before the officer arrives, she puts her arms around Klaus, and she says _"thank you. I'll remember everything you've told me and given me, and maybe one day, in years time, you'll come back to visit me."_

Klaus swallows. He steps to the door as an officer enters, and he says, _"thank you very much. Thank you."_

He's there in time to join evening roll-call. Everyone looks at one another, and they stand with renewed, albeit dwindling physical, strength. He grits his teeth against the dizziness in his head, and he tries to draw as little attention to himself as possible, even if he knows, now, that it's simply pure luck, Russian roulette, to not be picked on for one thing or another. He's tuned the guard out, however, letting him drone on unintelligibly in the back of his head when, beside him, Elijah's knees buckle. 

Klaus acts fast, arms launching forwards and wrapping around his closest arm, and he watches Elijah's head roll limply, his eyes closed. Leaning entirely on Klaus, his weight almost drags them both to the ground, but Dave, on his other side, reaches out in a split second to grab his other arm and together they hold him up, standing stock still and trying to do so as subtly as possible. Elijah's cold to the touch and, had Klaus not been as malnourished and weak as he was, he had no doubt that he would have usually been able to carry him in the way he might have been able to carry a younger child. His heart twists painfully, his grip tightens. He knows there's many, many other young people in the camp, all lost without their families, and he can't do anything to help them, but he can try with Elijah, at least. And he does try.

Him and Dave keep facing forwards, keep Elijah standing upright until his eyes flutter and open, head lifting slightly. His gaze lands on Dave first, and then, realising the situation, he slowly finds his feet beneath himself, although neither Klaus nor Dave let go of him. His breathing's shallow, heart erratic, and Klaus just holds him close and they try to ignore the biting snow and how they're too tired to shiver. 

Someone else falls. They can't get up and Klaus watches his blood get spilled across the pristine snow, listens to his last few breaths, and Klaus wonders if he has any family left. 

As the evening goes on, fear intermingles with the excitement. Time ticks away too fast, and slowly the fear settles in. What if they don't even make it to the fence? What if they all get mowed down by a rifle? What unimaginable punishments have they been holding out on that they'll finally make them a victim of? Will he be found at the last minute? Is this how he's supposed to die, and he just doesn't know it yet? He'll be found and shot, or hung, or beat, or whipped, or starved, or tortured, and that's it. God won't bring him back now. What if his legs give out? It's likely. He can hardly stand for roll-call; he doubts that, had he not been so determined to keep Elijah up and safe, he would have been the one to collapse. What if he faints? Drags Dave and Elijah down with him? What if they bring a dog out to find them, and he's torn apart by sharp teeth and vicious claws? He can hear dogs barking occasionally, and it scares him as much as the click of a gun.

What if he's split from Dave, found, beat, dragged back to camp within the last few minutes of his life, and he sees Dave, just as bloody and bruises, caught, hardly upright in line to be hung, and a fist or a bullet makes his vision go black. Or if he watches Dave die first, then Elijah, and only after he's helpless, too weak to do anything and forced to watch them die, will Klaus follow after them. He wonders if the photographer will be there. 

As long as he's conscious, though, he tells himself he won't stop running. Broken ribs, wrongfully healed bones, tired and weak as he might be, if he can move his legs, he will. 

Dave's grip on his hand in the barracks that evening is almost bruising. Klaus tips his head close to his ear. "If I stop," he murmurs, "or if I fall, or lag behind, leave me. Promise me you'll keep running."

Dave looks at him. Klaus thinks it's a miracle that the two of them have both managed to live and stay together this long. "Klaus..."

"Promise me. You keep going. You get Elijah and keep going. Leave me behind if I slow you down."

Dave swallows. "Only if you promise the same," he says. Klaus' jaw locks tightly. He glances to Elijah across the room, dead asleep, shivering.

"Promise," he says, and he isn't sure if it's the truth or not. 

He wakes up to Dave shaking him. He presses a finger to his lips and Klaus knows. He sits up slowly, favouring his ribs, and with Dave's help they slide off the bunk and to the floor. Other people are already awake and waking others, all moving silently as shadows. Klaus teeth chatter, only partially from the cold, and in the midst of people, Klaus grabs Elijah with one hand, Dave with the other, and keeps them close.

Slowly, someone cracks the doors open, millimetre by millimetre, peering out the door. Then someone slips inside and Klaus' breath catches in his throat, for they are dressed in uniform, and Klaus is sure they are utterly fucked. But the man is too skinny to be a guard, and he says, _"groups of five, groups of five. No more."_

Five people in front of him get taken out. They close the door and leave, and everyone stands around, waiting, silent, with baited breath. He isn't sure how long it takes, but he, Dave and Elijah shove their way to the front, using Elijah and his age as leverage, and they stare expectantly at the large doors. Time passes. A draft chills him to the bone. The door creaks open and the disguised soldier comes forwards, picks them and two other people, and they step outside. They're told to stay quiet, to not look around, to keep their heads down, and they do. They follow closely behind him, and Klaus' hands shake. He doesn't dare look up from his feet as he drags them through the snow. Dave's in front, Elijah behind him, and Klaus following the rear, with the extra two people silently behind him. They weave through the camp and he hears the disguised soldier explain what's going on, and then they're in a truck, doors slamming behind them. The truck shakes to a start and then crushes snow beneath its wheels, and Klaus curls his hands into his clothes. 

He still has the pocket mirror Hedwig gave him. He can feel it held underneath his armpit uncomfortably, hidden, safe. He can feel his heart pound like marching drums against his ribs. Drive out with the excuse of being sent to another camp. Take a detour further North ever so slightly, and hope that no one's following the truck.

It doesn't take long for the truck to come to a stop, and the doors are thrown open, the five of them ushered off rapidly, into the blinding blizzard outside. _"Trees, go, now."_

And they do. The truck leaves as quickly as possible, and the five of them hardly waste a single second. They see the treeline and they run.

The first five people are lingering there, too, uncertain, afraid, but with another group, they band together and begin to run. The snow's deep, freezing, soaking their clothes and burning their legs. Dave points in a direction and everyone follows, trying to put more speed behind their legs. Klaus knows that wherever these little hideouts will be, they'll be further away. Far enough away that they wouldn't easily be found, at least. Truck lights reappear and five more people join them, and again another five. Despite their urgency, they wait for them all to catch up, and together they run. Naked tree branches swat at them like angry guards trying to force them back to their fates, and their shoes sink into the snow. Klaus kicks his off, and so does everyone else. The snow burns their feet but already it feels easier to run like that, and so they keep going.

The truck returns. People get off.

Another truck skids to a halt behind it. There's yelling, screaming, all of a sudden, and Klaus' blood runs cold.

How much further do they have to run? The forest seems to stretch forever, and yet it seems so short, the truck so close behind them. Klaus' hand tightens in Dave's, and something suddenly roars up in him, and they run much faster than Klaus thought he physically could. His feet pound the ground, slipping in the snow, and Dave and Elijah match his pace, as well as the other people running with them. 

Gunshots echo. Someone screams and falls. Someone stops, reaching for them, only to cry out and fall. Klaus ducks, trying to make himself even smaller, and almost slips on the ground. No, no, no. It was a foolish hope to have, but it was supposed to go right. They weren't supposed to be found - not so quickly, anyway. They weave between tight trees and the gunshots only seem to get closer and closer and closer. People fall left and right, wailing loud into the silent night, a chilling, haunting sound that freezes him more than the murderous blizzard. Klaus wonders if a heart can explode. It feels as if his might. It feels as if his heart might break and shatter his ribcage and tear free of his skin. 

He keeps running. A gunshot echoes. They keep running. Elijah's face is wet with tears. Klaus' body burns. Care for his weak legs and broken ribs is thrown aside, saved for a time where he can afford to slow down. He slips, catches himself, hand splayed in the snow, and keeps running. Dave tugs him upwards slightly. He can see torchlight bouncing between the trees and furious yelling. Klaus thinks of Hedwig. He wonders if they'll make the connection. He wonders if, had she not had the dinner, if they would have even made it out of the camp.

A gunshot splits the air. They all fall, and Elijah screams. Dave scrambles to his feet and so does Klaus, but Elijah doesn't. Even through the darkness and the flurry of snow, Klaus can see the blood seeping from his hip. 

He falls to his knees beside Elijah and tries to haul him upwards, but Elijah just screams; a long, wavering, horrific sound that will haunt Klaus forever.

"Go," splutters Elijah, bloodstained hands pushing at Klaus'. "_Go_! You - you promised! Doh-don't stop!" He pleads, begs with him, and tears run down his face as Klaus splutters for air and tries to put pressure on the wound.

"_Elijah_," Klaus keens, words caught in his throat. "We can't - I won't leave - I can't leave you, get up, get up, come on! _Get up_!" 

He knows they're coming closer. Can hear them blundering through the trees. Further back, he can hear another truck, and then dogs barking. He can't find any air or any words and his hands are wet and sticky and Elijah's blood keeps spilling onto the snow, onto their clothes, everywhere, and it doesn't stop. His eyes sting. Tears blur his vision. He hooks his arms under Elijah's armpits and fumbles to his feet, dragging him a few paces before he falls into the snow as his foot falls into a small foxhole, ankle cracking like a whip.

_"Klaus," _Elijah says, choked with a cry. He grabs Klaus' hand. His shakes so badly, covered in his own blood, and Klaus can see fear and pain in his eyes. Too much of it. Klaus feels as if he was the one that got shot. He can't breathe. _"Go. _Please. Go. Please, Klaus, please, please, just run."

"Klaus," says Dave, crying too, tugging his arms. He clasps Elijah's other hand in his own, strokes the back of his hand with his thumb.

"Find me," says Klaus suddenly. "Find me. After. Find me. Klaus Hargreeves, the - the Umbrella Academy, find me, do you understand? Find me, find me, okay?" He takes Elijah's face in his hands. Elijah forces himself to nod, a sad, twisted failure of a smile on his lips. 

"Go. Thank you. Thank you."

Klaus fumbles in his shirt as Dave forces him to his feet. He finds the hand mirror Hedwig gave him, and the top half of the mirror is smashed into shards. He finds the largest shard and places it into Elijah's hand, and he trusts him to do whatever he decides best to do with it. 

He's sixteen, Klaus thinks. Separated from his family, dying alone in the snow. Klaus' fingers trail his own blood down his jaw, and his lip wobbles. "You're - you're so good," he tells him. "Did so good. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry. Find me."

He stumbles backwards, pain lacing up his ankle and leg with each step. He watches Elijah fail to smile, tears running down the blood on his face, and then Klaus and Dave turn and keep running. Leave Elijah by himself as the guards and the dogs and the guns get closer. He hears Elijah yell something, something in Polish, something he doesn't understand, and he doesn't dare turn to watch Elijah use the mirror shard to end his own life before the Nazi's get the satisfaction of doing it. 

Between the crying and pain each time he tries to breathe, black dots dance mockingly in Klaus' vision and Klaus wonders if he'll just collapse. Dave's just as bad, his breaths ragged and painful sounding, wheezing gasps. He tugs Klaus this way and that, and they run with a mad man's desperation, blindly dodging trees and ignoring all the pain and the snow and the cold. Klaus trusts Dave to guide the way there, unsure of where these little dug-outs actually are, but Dave knows. 

A gunshot echoes. Someone wails; a woman, high pitched and haunting, and then there's a second gunshot and she falls silent. Dogs barking slices through the air. They keep running.

Dave trips. Klaus yanks him upright again with a violence he doesn't intend, really, but it gets Dave up again, and when Klaus trips over a tree root and hits the floor, Dave grabs him under the arms and keeps on hauling him until he finds his own feet beneath him. One of his hands grip Dave's so tightly he's afraid either of their bones might snap, and the other grips Hedwig's broken mirror like a knife. 

Branches scratch at his face and his arms, catch at the rags on his body, try and push them back, slow them down. They keep running. He can't breathe.

They dash around for a while, Dave looking half crazed as he eyes each tree, each spot on the floor until, finally, blessedly, he nods his head at Klaus, stops, and looks down. He slides into a deep, narrow hole dug into the ground, very much like a vertical grave, and Klaus slides in after him. It's narrow enough that Klaus needs to stand on Dave's feet to fit, and it's full of snow, water and mud, reaching near their knees and freezing them. They shiver so violently Klaus feels like he's a minute from a seizure. Snow keeps piling in and he wonders if they'll get buried alive by it.

He's still crying, still gasping for breath, and he has to shove a hand into his mouth to try and muffle it. Dave does the same. Dogs bark. A gunshot echoes. Klaus sobs. 

He wraps his other arm around Dave, presses them even closer, bones against bones, and the stubble on Dave's head tickles his cheek. His eyes stay wide, staring at the pitch darkness of mud in front of him. 

They're going to die. He knew this fact, of course, and had accepted it, but in the face of it terror runs through him. After so much, he's going to die, and God won't send him back again. He knows it. He had to leave Elijah to die alone, and he'll watch Dave die, and he'll die, and his family well never know. 

A sob runs through him. Dave's hand on his side grips him in fear so tight he wonders if he could just grab his rib and realign it, or shatter his hip into dust beneath his touch. Klaus wouldn't blame him. His own hand grips Dave tight enough, nails digging in, that he thinks he might be drawing blood. He can't tell, though. Elijah's still trickles down his hands and his arms.

"I love you," Klaus suddenly blurts in a stolen whisper. "I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you." He needs the words off his chest. Needs Dave to know before he dies. 

Dave inhales unsteadily. "I love you too," he whispers back. Klaus' cheek feels wet from where Dave's cheek rests against it. Klaus wants to scream. 

There's a pop as someone steadies their gun. Another pop from the other side. Footsteps crunching snow. Getting closer, closer, closer. They're fucked. They're dead. They won't even die here; they'll be forced back to camp to die painfully, dragged out as much as possible. 

Footsteps come closer. Closer, closer, closer. They pause only a couple of feet from where they stand, stuck in the ground. Dave's shaking increases. So does Klaus'. He has to struggle not to start hyperventilating, to start gasping, to start screaming, wailing.

_"Klaus?"_ Hisses a voice. Both he and Dave go statue still, rigid like corpses with rigor mortis, and Klaus knows that voice. He turns his face to the raging storm overhead. _"Klaus? Are you here?"_

_"Five?" _He chokes out. Dave looks like he has to stop himself from covering Klaus' mouth.

Snow parts as a person inches forwards. Five's face appears above them, pinched, and then his eyes widen comically. The sight of him, death or fear-induced hallucination or not, has Klaus' shoulders heaving violently with a sob. _"Five," _he gasps, then, and he reaches a hand up towards his brother. "Five, please, please, help us."

Five seems as if he's in a state of utter shock for a moment before he shakes his head. "We're leaving, Klaus, reach up," he says, voice sounding detached. 

"With Dave," assures Klaus. Five's eyes narrow and looks at Dave, just as shocked as Five was.

"I can't travel with a lot of people, Klaus," he says, "just us. Come on, let's go."

And oh, he wants to. He wants to so badly, and he wonders if he is dead, or dying, because this simply can't be real. 

But he can't leave Dave. Not now, not after everything, not while he knows what'll happen to him. He shakes his head violently enough to make his balance swing. "No," he says, "no, no, no, I can't - I won't leave him, I won't." His grip tightens on Dave. A gunshot echoes. Five doesn't flinch. Klaus and Dave jump violently. It's too close.

Five grits his teeth together. He eyes Dave, then eyes Klaus, and mutters a string of curses. "I'll try," he says, "both of you, get out."

Klaus doesn't hesitate. Five has to haul him out, and he falls on his back in the snow, then urges a wide-eyed Dave out. With Dave's help, Klaus finds his burning feet again, and Klaus turns desperately to Five as he sees torchlight bouncing through the trees. _"Five-"_

"I know," says Five, and he reaches, grabs Klaus and Dave's bloody hands in his, and goes tense. His hands splutter blue like little sparks. Klaus' heart pounds threateningly as he hears dogs tumbling over one another, clearly caught on their scent, barking furiously. He sees the glint of a rifle. His hand grips Five's tighter and he can't stop his hyperventilating now, tumbling into a mad panic. 

The air ripples. A deep, brilliant blue blooming from Five, moving like waves, pulling at his skin, his bones, his mind. And then it's suddenly blinding, dazzling, stealing his breath.

Pain shoots through him. He's on a hard marble ground, tumbling as if he's just fallen down a hill. He hears two bodies hit the floor either side of him. Dave's still breathing, but completely unconscious, and Five seems dazed and out of breath. Darkness swarms Klaus despite the sudden lighting from a chandelier that wasn't there a second ago.

He lifts his head off the floor as footsteps shuffle closer. Voices buzz around his ears like incoherent wasps. And there, last seen in a painting in Germany, is the dysfunctional remains of the Umbrella Academy, his family, all staring at him like how one might stare at a corpse.

Klaus is sure he's dead. He closes his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be of the sibling's POV, and potentially the last, if not, second last chapter! After that I'll put this fic into a series and create another follow-up/sequel fic for the recovery/aftermath. Thank you for reading, I'd love to hear your feedback!


	9. Chapter 9

Admittedly, they don't get to the subject of Klaus' absence for a while. It partially slips Diego's mind, what with the whole deal of Patch's death taking priority to him. And everyone else simply... didn't think much of his disappearance. Klaus is gone, and Klaus has been disappearing since they were fourteen years old. It's not unlike Klaus to run away and not be seen or heard from for days, for weeks; hell, for months, even. It's the norm for Klaus. Klaus' flightiness had only increased over the years and, as of late, he was more used to not knowing whether Klaus had overdosed fatally, let alone not knowing where he is, than actually knowing where he is. 

When Diego does think back to Klaus once more, his thoughts are turned rapidly to Allison that night. She runs off to see Vanya and they only just reach her in time to bring her back to have her throat tended to, and thoughts of Klaus are gone in the approaching apocalypse, Harold Jenkin's death, and Allison's near death, with Vanya's power revelations added on top of that like a rotten cherry on an equally rotten cake. 

So Klaus' normal disappearance is not at the top of their list of priorities, and from Diego going to the motel to Hazel coming to the Academy, it's never mentioned again. Hazel's appearance changes that.

After Diego reluctantly accepts the fact that, at this moment, he's unable to kill Hazel without him or Five beating his ass, he forces himself to slump into a barstool on Five's side. He wonder if it's Hazel that shot Patch, or if it's Cha-Cha. In the ended, he doesn't really care. Both of them played a part in her death, and both of them need to pay for what they did. His nails dig into the palms of his hands, his teeth gritting almost painfully. 

"So you're just retired? Just relaxing before the end of everything, after everything you've done?" Diego asks. Hazel's eyes flit distractedly to Diego. He means Eudora, but saying the sentence aloud reminds him of Klaus' disappearance; of a blood stained room and no sign of Klaus. 

"There's nothing else to be done," he says, hands curled around the margarita Five had offered him. He's yet to actually take a sip of it. "I am sorry about your friend, but I can't do anything to fix that now."

Diego thinks he doesn't have the right to reference Eudora. His lips move around silent words for a minute before his voice complies with him. "What about Klaus, then? What did you do with him?"

Hazel's eyebrows furrow. "Who?"

"My brother," Diego hisses. Five raises an eyebrow curiously, sipping his margarita.

"The junkie," clarifies Hazel. Diego forces a nod. "We didn't do anything with him."

"What do you mean?"

"After your friend broke in, he ran away. Stole our briefcase, actually. But he got out."

"Klaus stole your briefcase?" Five blurts, seeming somehow more interested in that than the idea of Klaus being kidnapped. 

"Yeah. Couldn't get it back. Just dodged a bullet having to report back that it wasn't us that used it."

"He used it?"

"Who cares about a briefcase?" Diego scoffs. Five stares at him like he's an idiot

"The briefcase," says Five, slowly, enunciated, "is a time travelling machine. One I could have used." 

Diego's eyebrows knit together slightly. "Klaus stole a time machine," he repeats, "and used it?"

"Probably didn't mean to," Hazel shrugs. "But used it nonetheless."

"Where - when - did he go, then?" Diego asks. "Shouldn't we be more worried about that?"

Five glances away. "Probably. He could fuck up the timeline more than ever," he admits with exasperation. "When did he go?" He turns that to Hazel with some curiosity, an idea forming behind his eyes, and no doubt about the apocalypse.

Hazel heaves a heavy sigh. He places down his margarita and stuffs a hand into the pocket of his suit pants, then pulls out a folded piece of paper, unfolds it, and reads, "nineteen-forty-three."

Five looks away in thought. "So, either he's done nothing, or completely fucked the timeline. Great." 

"What do you think he'll have done, like?" Diego asks sarcastically.

"Drugs," Five snorts. "He'll see this as a little trip, no doubt, without realising the cosmic level consequences messing irresponsibly with the timeline could bring."

"Then we ought to think about getting him back," Diego states. Five quirks an eyebrow.

"And how do you propose we do that? We don't even know where he is. I can't just zap there and grab him. And plus; he'll be fine. We've got countable hours until the apocalypse, and that's what's important," he says. He sips his margarita, looking slightly more stressed at the reminder of the apocalypse. 

"Not that our brother's in nineteen-fucking-forty-three?" Diego retorts. Five rolls his eyes. 

"You go find him, then. You learn time travel and go get him."

Diego glares at him. "He'll have that briefcase you need," he states. "Get Klaus, you get that briefcase."

Five manages to groan without actually verbalising it, but the look he gives Diego is enough to convey that. "You find him," he says dismissively. "Or you could focus on getting your misplaced revenge for your girlfriend, or your sister lying with a slit throat, or your other sister on the verge of destroying the world." He spreads one of his hands. "Since all of them are, you know, of an equal importance."

And Diego knows he's got a point. He can't do anything himself to get Klaus back, and what good would it do when they're all supposed to die soon, and Allison almost did. He knows, but there's something in his gut, something heavy and uncomfortable. 

Diego stands up. Still unsure of what he's doing, he takes a few steps towards the door. He's stopped by Five in the doorway.

"Diego," he calls. Diego glances over his shoulder. "You find anything on Klaus, come to me."

It's as close as he'll get to assistance, he thinks. Some support in chasing Klaus. 

He needs to get his mind off Eudora for just a second, anyway. He goes to the library. 

He has no idea how to find Klaus. All he knows is that he's supposedly in 1943, and, for some reason, Diego doesn't believe that Klaus will have done some news-breaking thing to bring attention to himself or get his name out there. He sits at the library computer, Google opened. Is he supposed to be looking for some Wikipedia page? If he searches his name, he's sure that the only thing that'll come up is news articles on the Umbrella Academy.

It's the only thing he can do, really. So he types in _Klaus Hargreeves 1943._

He hadn't expected anything to come up. He certainly hadn't expected article after article to come up. 

_Klaus Hargreeves, artist of Auschwitz._

_Hedwig Hensel speaks out about artist in Auschwitz camp._

_Wife of SS guard shares art created by prisoner of Auschwitz._

_Hedwig Hensel shares the story of artist, Klaus Hargreeves, in Auschwitz._

_Surviving photos of Auschwitz artist._

_Escape attempts committed in Auschwitz.  
-Klaus Hargeeves…. _

Despite the name, it doesn't really click for Diego. Not immediately. Because _Klaus _and _Auschwitz _and _prisoner _don't go together in a sentence. They don't work together, don't make sense. They're like pieces of three different pieces, ill-fitting and obviously wrong. It stirs confusion in Diego because why would they put those words together? He clicks on the first link.

It's a short article, filled mainly with quotes from that aforementioned Hedwig Hensel from other articles. 

_'He never told me his name...'_

_'Very quiet, very small. The first time I saw him..."_

_'I never heard what became of him.'_

_'Found his name at the bottom of one of my paintings. Beautiful things, he made. I still have them, and I'll give them to my kids. I never did manage to find his family, though I suppose they really belong to them.' _

It all only adds to his confusion. The article claims that Klaus is a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz, arriving in July. There's little information on him in this one other than that ridiculous thing, and most of it talks from Hedwig's knowledge of him. It claims she would request him to come and paint. He never told her what went on; not really, but his physical appearance was telling enough. It shows some of his paintings; a portrait of a young Hedwig, a portrait of her children, one of their garden in a winter's evening. One with Diego's face in it.

"What the fuck," mutters Diego. All of them are there. Diego, Allison, Vanya, Five, Luther, Grace, and, in the background, is Ben, perfectly captured despite years since his death. Hovering over his shoulder, the ghost of Ben mutters the same thing.

Diego backs out of the article and looks through them all, and then clicks the video with an elderly woman in the thumbnail. He finds a pair of offered library headphones and places them over his ears, then clicks play.

The woman and the interviewer speaks in German, but subtitles at the bottom translate it to English.

_"What was your connection with the camps?"_

The woman, Hedwig, shakes her head. _"None, personally. It was my connection to my husband. You know of him."_

_"Rudolf Höss?"_

_Hedwig nods. "Commandant of Auschwitz."_

_"And you didn't know what he was doing?"_

_"I was never told. He lied to me; told me it was paradise. Justice for criminals. They simply had to work to repay their crimes, and that seemed fair to me. I begun to suspect, of course. I heard things I wasn't supposed to hear. Saw things I wasn't supposed to see."_

_"And Klaus Hargreeves was one of these?"_

Hedwig laughs softly, and reaches for a glass of water. Silence stretches out as she drinks and sits the glass back down. _"Oh, he never told me a thing," _she says. _"Said I didn't want to know and it wasn't his place to tell me, no matter how much I pried."_

_"When did you first see him?"_

_"Oh... shortly before Winter. I told Rudolf that I wanted a portrait of our children; photographs were good, but I wanted colour. He told me he would find me an artist. He brought to me Klaus Hargreeves a few days after I asked."_

_"And what was he like?"_

_"That first time?"_

_"The first time, yes."_

Hedwig looks away, shifting in her seat. _"Very quiet," _she says. _"I was told he didn't speak much German, because I offered him food at dinner time and he froze up. I... remember holding that plate out to him - it was nothing much, a quick meal I made for the kids and for him, too, because he looked all skin and bones - and he stared at it, stared at me, and I thought he might cry. He looked for permission to take it, and only ate after he was sure he could. He said not much more; just worked."_

_"Do you still have his portraits?"_

_"Oh, of course. I have everything he painted in my home. I've already shown them, and you asked for pictures of them. He asked me to share them, you know."_

_"Do you know why?"_

_"I was never sure, but I can guess he wanted it to reach his family. I could never find them. So they're still in my home, and I'll pass them down to my children, and if we find any remaining family of his, we'll give them to them. But it's been decades and we've heard nothing from any family of his. He told me they didn't know where he was, once."_

_"How many times did you see him?"_

Hedwig exhales deeply. _"A few. After that first time, he was left with me alone. He relaxed much more then. The times I saw him were slightly spread out, enough so that each time he came over he looked like a different person. The third time, I remember, he was covered in bruises. Held himself sorely. One time he looked as if he had been in the snow for an hour before knocking on my door. He looked like a skeleton. He told me once that he was sorry if I scared his children because of his looks."_

_"Do your children know of him?"_

_"I've told all of them about him, now. The eldest of my children remember him."_

_"When was the last time you saw him?"_

Hedwig sighs. She brushes a silver strand of hair behind her ear. _"Further into the winter. He looked like he might die on his feet, but there was light in his eyes that I hadn't seen before at all. He confessed to me that they planned to escape that night. He didn't finish his painting of his that night."_

_"Did you see him again after that night?"_

Hedwig's lips press into a tight line. She shakes her head slowly. _"No. I never did. I never heard from him again. I only hoped he managed to get out of the country and that he didn't want to return, understandably."_

_"Was this him?"_

The interviewer, a middle-aged man with beady eyes, greasy hair, and large glasses, slides a black and white photo forwards across the table between them. Diego can't see it from the camera's point of view. Hedwig leans forwards, pulling the photo to her and lifting it up to her eyes.

_"Yes. This is him," _she says, her voice quiet and small. _"When was this taken?"_

_"Early winter, I think."_

_"I can see the bruises in it," _she murmurs with a nod. _"He always did have those peculiar tattoos. I never got the story behind them."_

_"Do you know what happened to him?"_

Hedwig looks up at him. _"No."_

Another photo is slid forwards. He hears Hedwig swallow audibly. _"Which one is him?"_

_"The first. Closest to the camera. He was found that night, when trying to escape. He was starved and hung, with the others that attempted to escape."_

_"I was afraid he would be caught," _admits Hedwig after a moment's silence. Her hand shakes as she sets the photo back down. _"I don't know what you want me to say." _

Diego stops listening. He watches instead as grainy photos fade onto the screen, photographs that make his jaw drop and his stomach surge. 

He recognises the mugshot first. It's simply how Klaus would look with his head and face shaved, but still Klaus, save for the eyes naked of any smudged eyeliner, his face a cold deadpan. Another photo fades in, and had Klaus not had his hands spread out to show his tattoos, Diego doesn't think he would recognise him. Dressed in loose rags, his face a hollow skull, collar bones dipping like trenches, Klaus stands in an long room crammed full of equally skeletal men at night. 

Diego clicks out of the page rapidly. His heart pounds in his chest. Klaus Hargreeves, 1943, tattoos and all; not even a coincidence by name. He had painted them. 

He goes onto another page. It has a slideshow of photos, starting with the mugshot he had seen, and Diego clicks through all of them. Each one shows Klaus, sure enough, and Diego watches as he seems to deteriorate through the photos. He holds himself painfully in some, his eyes half-lidded, his arms covered in dirt, his clothes stained with mud and - and something else. His cheeks cave inwards, hollow, his eyes stare right through the camera and at him, right at Diego. The last photograph of Klaus is unclear, and it's one of him hanging limply by a noose around his neck, among multiple other men. Then it shows pictures of his art, of a young Hedwig, of her children, of her garden, and of them, the Umbrella Academy, and an unfinished one of the entrance to the Academy. It zooms in one a signature. _Klaus Hargreeves/4. _

All the articles tell the same story. Klaus Hargreeves, a Jewish man from Berlin, whom was transported to Auschwitz in July, who painted for a guard's wife, and who tried, and failed, to escape. Klaus Hargreeves, with no family, no one to trace him back to despite the family portrait, nothing. He had lived and he had been murdered, alone, forgotten.

It's not real, is Diego's first gut reaction. It can't be. But there's photos after photos after photos, all of Klaus. Articles of Klaus Hargreeves, of the artist in Auschwitz, who died. Who is dead.

He flips to a photo. Klaus' face zooms in, taking up the entire frame, staring right at Diego with hopeless, accusing eyes. _You forgot about me, and I'm dead. You didn't notice I was gone, and I'm dead. I got kidnapped and sent back in time to humanity's worst moments, and it killed me. I'm dead and you never noticed I was gone._

He needs to get to Five. 

Diego screenshots every picture, every painting, prints them out, and runs out of the library in a bit of a daze.

He gets there in time to see Vanya. She walks up the Academy stairs slowly, hesitating out the doors. She turns when Diego blunders up the stairs and Diego all but skids to a stop. 

"Diego," breathes Vanya. Vanya, who had almost killed Allison. Ruthlessly slit her own sister's throat. Diego swallows.

"Vanya," he returns.

"Are - are you okay?" She asks, eying him and the stack of papers clutched in his hands. He looks down at them, turned away from Vanya, hiding Klaus' face from her. But he stares at Diego, right into his eyes. 

"F..." The word catches in his throat, thick, heavy, and stays there for several moments. "Fah... family meeting," he says, and he opens the doors, feet loudly hitting the ground as he rushes in with Vanya behind him.

"What is it, Diego?"

"Vanya?" Luther stands in the foyer, looking as if he'd been caught red-handed. He eyes Vanya, his face suddenly closing off, and Diego understands. But there's a pressing urgency rising in his throat, tightening his ribs around his lungs. More than Vanya, because at least she's alive.

"Family meeting, Luther," Diego snaps. "Five! Family meeting!"

"Diego-"

"Family meeting, Luther," Diego repeats icily. 

The living room doors slide open as Five leisurely comes up to the doorway, raising an eyebrow. "Oh, hi, Vanya."

Vanya shifts awkwardly. "Hi. I... I need to say I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I... is Allison okay? I didn't mean to - to hurt her, I really didn't, I-"

"She's fine. Just," says Luther coldly, his face a hateful, bitter expression. 

"Can I see her? Please?"

"I suppose we better talk about this," Five sighs, taking a step back into the living room. Luther inhales deeply.

"There's nothing to talk about," he states. "She almost killed Allison."

"I didn't mean to, Luther, please-"

"But you still did," Luther snaps. "Look, she's dangerous. I was reading dad's files and he has a room that's capable of holding her powers; she ought to be in there until we know what to do."

"She's right there," Five retorts, waving a hand at Vanya. "I don't know if you've noticed, Luther, but dad did that to us and look how we turned out. Treating her like dad treated us is fucking stupid."

"She isn't safe!" Luther says. "Allison would have died if we hadn't gotten there in time. She can't talk, Five-"

"At least she'll be fine," Diego hisses. "Klaus is dead." It tumbles off his tongue before he can pull it back, before he can stop it. 

Silences echoes deafeningly around them. Diego wonders if they can hear his heartbeat. 

"What do you mean?" Luther asks, eyes narrowing. "He's just done another runner. Klaus always runs away. He's fine; who cares?"

"He's dead, Luther. Dead. He's not run away, he's fuh-fuh…" Diego screws his eyes shut, a sound hissing between his teeth. "_Fucking _dead."

"What did you find?" Five asks, standing more upright. Diego holds up the stack of paper he's printed. It wavers in his grasp. 

"He was..." Diego looks down at the paper. "We really need to talk about this," he murmurs. 

"What are you saying, Diego?" Luther asks. Diego's already walking to the living room, though, Five walking back inside and forcing Vanya and Luther to follow him. Vanya sits down, looking on edge, and Luther remains standing, folding his arms across his chest.

"Did he overdose?" Luther asks. Diego kneels by the coffee table. He sets the paper down and slowly spreads them each. 

"Who's that?" Vanya asks quietly. Diego swallows.

"When the house got shot up, Hazel kidnapped Klaus," explains Five. "We thought he just went off by himself like usual. Hazel told us earlier that Klaus stole his brief case - a time travelling device issued by the Temps Commission - and accidentally travelled back in time to nineteen-forty-three. I told Diego to go find him, then. Diego, what did you find?"

"There's tons of articles on him," Diego says. "Just had to type in his name and the year. Tons of stuff. Remember... history lessons? Nineteen-forty-three, world war two, Hitler; all that."

"What are you saying?" Luther asks, confusion evident in his voice.

"Klaus Hargreeves died in nineteen-forty-three. Starved and... and hung after trying to escape Auschwitz concentration camp. He... uh, he did art. Painted an officer's wife and family. She did interviews about him. He painted us." He pushes the picture of the portrait of them all forwards. 

Five zaps forwards despite only being a few feet from the table. He leans over it, eying all of the pictures, all of the screenshots of articles, all of the portraits. He picks one up. The one of Klaus standing outside one evening, standing next to a man, and he holds his hands out, finger's splayed. They can see the Umbrella Academy tattoo on his arm, too. If his face was still unrecognisable, they couldn't deny all of the tattoos, the eyes. 

"That's not Klaus," says Luther, shaking his head adamantly. Diego blinks, staring incredulously at him.

"Are you that fucking stupid, Luther?" Diego snaps, curling his hands into shaking fists. "None of us noticed he was kidnapped, and now he's dead! Klaus is _dead_!" He snatches up the blurry photo of Klaus, dead, feet not touching the floor. He all but slams it against Luther's chest as he rises to his feet. 

Luther's nostrils flare at him and he catches the paper, eying it. "You can't see Klaus in this," he says.

Diego waves his hand at the table full of photos. "You can in those!" He sucks in a breath, turning his back to him. "You know," he says, slowly, "he painted us. All of us, without himself in it. He was thinking of us. And none of us even thought about him."

Luther does fall silent then, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. His eyes turn to the picture of the portrait Klaus had painted. It was perfect, breath taking, and Diego feels bad for never noticing his brother’s talent until now. For a moment, they just stare at the painting. Klaus had thought of them and they hadn’t been there for him, when he needed them more than ever. Had he been waiting for them to realise and help? Trusting that his siblings will come to save him? It makes Diego’s throat tight. 

He wants, desperately, to see the painting, and to thank Klaus for thinking of them, and to hug Klaus and tell them that he’s safe. That they did find him, did help him, eventually. But the painting just goes to show that they hadn’t thought of Klaus, and Klaus wasn’t in the painting with them, at all. Had he felt like he didn’t belong there? Had he not had a chance to paint himself into it? 

Diego’s eyes sting. He feels like a murderer, an utter failure of a brother. 

Vanya's not said anything. She sits on the edge of the couch, reading one of the articles with her hands over her mouth, eyes wide. Ben, unseen, paces the room, hands in his hair, stomach writhing.

Footsteps drag heavily to the living room. For some reason, Diego expects to see Klaus there. It's Allison instead, hands clutching the door frame. Luther hurries to her side, urging her onto the nearest seat. 

_What's going on? _She mouths. 

"Allison," croaks Vanya, and her shoulders shake with emotion. Allison's eyes snap to her and she lights up. She holds out a hand slightly, offers a warm smile. Luther steps in front of her and only moves when Allison repeatedly slaps his side until he moves. 

_What's happening? _Allison repeats, eying them all.

Diego and Five and Luther all share a look. They glance to the coffee table. 

"Klaus is gone," says Five, his voice low.

_Where?_

"Gone," Diego utters. "Dead."

Allison sits up a little, shock flashing across her face. No sound comes from her mouth, though, and she looks between them all. She mouths words too fast for Diego to really catch, then she points at the pictures on the table.

"He time travelled," says Diego. "Got sent back to nineteen-forty-three. Right into Auschwitz. He's dead. None of us noticed he was missing."

Allison shakes her head in denial, forcing herself to her feet so that she can stand up (with Luther's hands hovering nearby her) and sift through the pictures Diego printed out. Her jaw slack, tears match Vanya's, trickling down both their cheeks as she looks at grainy pictures of their brother. Diego finds all his energy suddenly being sapped and he falls bonelessly into a chair, staring at a picture of Klaus, head shaved, skin thin, bruised, hurt, pale. Dead. 

He failed Ben, he failed Eudora, and now he's failed Klaus. 

He drags his hands down his face, lifting his head. An odd kind of silence envelops them all, broken only by the hitching of Vanya's breath and the distant patter of rain outside and the crackling of the fire. No one knows what to do or what to say. Words can't help. It's more quiet than Ben's funeral; at least then there had been yelling and crying. Now it's just resounding horror and guilt and disbelief.

"Five," says Diego. "You've - you've got to go back; you've got to help him."

Five looks up from the photographs. "I can't do that, Diego. Last time I time travelled I got stuck in the future for forty-five years by accident." He says it slightly bitterly as he remembers something Diego can't comprehend, and Diego grits his teeth.

"You've got to, Five," he insists, rising to his feet. "We can't just leave him like this! Five, you've got to try." His voice lacks the original strength it had at the beginning, his hands curled into shaking fists by his side. Five presses his lips together tightly, looking at Klaus. 

"I can't even time travel with other people," he states. "It's too dangerous."

"More dangerous than that?" Diego retorts bitterly, waving at the pictures, the articles. Five doesn't reply.

"Five," says Vanya, quiet. "Please."

For once, Luther's silent. He doesn't try and say anything. He simply stares at the photo of Klaus' body with a conflicted expression. 

"I can't," repeats Five, his shoulders tense. "I'm physically unable to do that, Diego."

Diego runs one of his hands through his hair. He begins to pace. Around the coffee table, to the pillar, to the fireplace and repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

"You can try," Diego pleads. "Five, look at him."

"I know," snaps Five. "I know."

He bites his lip and looks away, firelight flickering across his face, his pinched features, tight jaw, high shoulders. 

"He's just... dead," Vanya murmurs, voice light, detached. "Oh, god. We never thought about him," she says, looking at them all. 

They can't even bury him. Can't say their goodbyes. The best they could do is a statue like Ben's, but Klaus had always said that he hated Ben's statue, so Diego doubts he would want a statue of himself. He'd probably want them to mix his ashes with cocaine and snort them, or something ridiculous like that. Not a statue.

With the knowledge that Klaus is gone, completely, his absence is much more pronounced. The halls echo with the silence where Klaus' heels should be tapping, or where he should be fumbling to open a cabinet to steal a trophy, dancing around the siblings and cracking dumb jokes. The house feels empty, sucked dry of life, and guilt tears at his insides.

"I'll try," Five finally mutters, shaking his head. "I'll try. Give me time." And, with that, he disappears in a flash, and can be heard upstairs, leaving them all to sit silently around the coffee table, looking at old pictures of a man that looks nothing like their brother.

Five comes back downstairs after several hours. The house has been as silent as a grave, people afraid to break the silence that should be broken by Klaus. 

He flashes into the living room where Diego and Vanya sit, for Luther took Allison back to the infirmary to lay down and rest. Diego keeps staring at all the photos, rereading the articles. They all show the same thing; Klaus is dead, Klaus is dead, Klaus is dead, dead, dead. Forgotten. Alone. 

They both jump, looking up at Five. He looks tired, his hair tussled from running his hands through it. 

"What is it?" Diego asks, standing up quickly. 

"I might have it," he says, looking between Diego and Vanya. "I'll try to go in and bring him back."

Diego nods his head vigorously. "Alright. Good, yeah," he shifts from foot to foot, eyebrows drawn slightly together. 

"I don't know if it'll work. If I'm not back in an hour just assume the worst."

Diego stares at him. Five shrugs. "I'll go in, I'll come back, if I can. If not, then you better keep the apocalypse away." He only glances briefly at Vanya.

"I'll go get Luther," Diego says. Five just offers a nod and Diego hurries quickly to the infirmary, boots pounding the ground. Luther looks up as he comes in and Allison blinks blearily at him.

"Five's going to try and get Klaus," he says. "Before... before."

Luther and Allison exchange looks. Slowly, Allison sits up and, with Luther's help, the two of them follow Diego back into the living room. Whatever Five and Vanya had been talking about falls quickly, and Five regards them all.

"I don't know how long I'll be; time works differently in each branch of the timeline. It could be seconds or days. Most likely seconds. The longer it is there's a chance I'm either dead or stuck."

"Are you sure you should be doing this?" Luther asks. "If it's so dangerously."

Diego bristles at the implication of leaving Klaus like _that. _Five looks at the photographs on the table, silent for a moment. Something flickers in his eyes. "Yes," he says, and then his hands flicker a deep blue, deeper than when he teleports, and the air ripples, and he's gone with a gust of wind, leaving the others in silence in his wake.

They stand. They stare at the spot where Five had disappeared in anticipation. Seconds bleed by them like hours, stretching out for an eternity. Diego chews the inside of his cheek and drums his fingers on his arms, fiddle with the leather knife harness on him. He tries to wrap his head around everything. Auschwitz. Klaus was in Auschwitz. Of all places. Has been for - for too long. And he had been thinking about them while they continued on with their life, blissfully unaware of the horrors he must have been witnessing; that he had become a part of. 

It feels like Five's gone for ages, but it's only a few minutes in reality. A few minutes pass and the air suddenly begins to ripple, crack and spread outwards, tearing reality apart in a similar, slightly less vicious fashion as the one Five had fallen from during the funeral days ago. If Diego looks hard enough, he thinks he can see trees, can almost hear dogs barking distantly.

Three people tumble out, and the portal, or whatever it really is, stitches itself back together.

Diego's first thought is that Five has brought two dead, decaying bodies back with him. His heart leaps into his throat, he takes a hesitant step forwards. Five's dazed, blinking slowly and sitting up. One man, pale, shaking, lays unconscious on the floor, and the other man groans painfully between ragged gasps. His body shakes violently, shivers seizing him thoroughly.

Diego doesn't recognise Klaus until he lifts his head and catches his eyes.

He looks like a corpse. Pale, dressed in rags, covered in dirt and blood, tears streaking down his face, his breaths coming in pained, erratic gasps. His hands shake over the floor and he rests his head back against the floor, closes his eyes, and curls ever so slightly in on himself, a wheezed, choked noise coming from his throat. 

"Klaus?" Diego says hesitantly, inching closer. Klaus' hands crawl up his face, streaking dark blood across his skin, and Diego can't find where he's bleeding from. He lifts his gaze momentarily to the strange man that came with them, looking utterly dead if not for the rise and fall of his chest. "Five? What happened?"

Five rubs his eyes like a tired toddler. "Did it," he murmurs, his words slightly slurring together. 

Diego kneels next to Klaus. Klaus startles violently when he touches him, resting a hand on his shoulder, but at least he opens his eyes again and meets Diego's. "Klaus?"

Klaus' eyes crinkle. He uses his hands to pull himself back, enough so that he can see Diego and everyone else hovering over Diego's shoulders, and then a sob tears past his lips. He covers his eyes with an arm, other hand reaching blindly back to find the other man and curl his hand into his clothes, and Diego doesn't know what to say as Klaus just seems to breakdown right there, unravelling in a flood of unstable tears, gently shaking the other man and murmuring things. _We're safe. We're safe. We're safe, Dave, they found us, they found us. We're alive._

No one knows what to say. Klaus seems content enough to murmur that mantra and his gratitude over again, and it occurs to Diego that he's crying from happiness, as twisted and painful as it looks on his face. He begins to slump, though, his entire body sagging with a sudden weight, and he gravitates to the floor, still gripping the man, and falls silent eventually. 

Diego doesn't know what to say.

"Oh, god," Vanya moans, choked up.

They bring both Klaus and the man, Dave, to the infirmary as quickly as they can. Diego feels sick with how easy it is to lift Klaus, and Luther seems uncomfortable with being able to lift a fully grown man as if he weighs nothing more than a feather - and that's without the addition of his own enhanced strength. Neither of them twitch at all, other than the shivering - and god, they're both freezing to touch, and thoroughly soaked to the bone, clothes clinging to them. They ley them down, side by side, on infirmary beds and while Grace and Pogo swallow down questions, focus instead on IV's and fluids that the two obviously need, Vanya punches the heating right up and gathers blankets, Five and Allison have to sit down, Five still dazed and Allison weak, and Diego and Luther shamelessly take off the soaked, filthy rags imposing as clothing off them, offering no help at all in trying to heat them up. 

Diego tries not to let his eyes linger, as if able to save his brother and his friend some modesty, but his eyes catch on the rough sharpness of his prominent bones. The bruises, the uneven shape of ribs beneath paper-thin skin, the way his hips seem to try and tear his skin apart with how far and tight it's stretched. Diego has to look at Klaus' hands to assure to himself that this is, in fact, Klaus, and not some skeleton Five's brought with him. He tries to ignore the scars he sees, the little ones littering the palms of his hands, the thick, painful one on the back of his head, the ones on his knees, along his nose, splattered across his body. 

He feels sick. His lunch from earlier sits heavy in his stomach, and he swallows repeatedly, even after the two of them are covered in fluffy blankets, with thick socks shoved onto their feet (Klaus' ankle looks painful, blossoming in fresh bruises) and Vanya finding gloves for their hands. Grace settles IV's into the crooks of their elbows and Diego watches numbly, detached. He falls onto a nearby seat heavily, scrubbing his hands down his cheeks. 

What are they supposed to do? With the sudden knowledge of Klaus' situation thrust upon them, the grief in his throat from knowing he had died and, had Five's time travel been inaccurate, he would still be dead, and now the simple fact that Klaus had been sent to one of humanity's worst horrors and none of them had bothered to think about him. How were they supposed to fix that? How were they supposed to help their brother with that?

He has no idea. No idea at all.

Klaus lays there, shivering, looking nothing at all like Klaus, and no one knows what to say or do. The only positive thing Diego can think is that, at the very least, he's alive. A collective heavy shame and guilt hangs in the air between them all as Grace potters around without a word, no smile on her lips.

The ink on the papers on the coffee table suddenly seems to run, smudging the articles and their stories into inky incoherency.

No one says anything. There's nothing to be said. Not yet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! I appreciate all of your feedback throughout this story, it truly means a lot to me. A recovery fic will be posted as a sequel fic soon! Although I’ll probably go through this first to edit it and fix any mistakes.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @veteranklaus, and feel free to check out my other many TUA fics on my account! Thank you!
> 
> Of course, if you have any concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. A lot of the experiences of Klaus and other characters are inspired by or that of real people, whom really had gone to Auschwitz and really had lost their lives, and I don’t want that to be taken lightly. It’s a horrific thing that really happened to millions of people, and it started gradually, and it wasn’t just Auschwitz. It started on the streets. It started gradually. It was all legal. It was worse than I could ever truly put into words and share. But hopefully this did manage to educate some people, or share a message, and I do hope that it did, fanfiction or not. Thank you <3


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